


I Draw Water, I Carry Fuel

by ailurish



Category: Super Junior
Genre: Established Relationship, Horror, M/M, Paranormal, Paranormal Investigators, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 22:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 54,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12308796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailurish/pseuds/ailurish
Summary: Paranormal investigation is a little easier when one half of the team can see and hear things even the cameras can't pick up. Donghae is clairvoyant, and he and Hyukjae have always done this, nearly as far back as they've known each other. They happen upon a very interesting case - a house both haunted and infested by a demon.Kangin and Leeteuk live with their five adopted sons when strange things begin happening in their new home, and they seek out help. Donghae and Hyukjae begin their investigation, uncovering the sinister being within, and try to keep the family safe. Meanwhile, Donghae deals with some inner demons of his own.-AU based on the movie The Conjuring. Established relationships, domesticity. Oh, and demons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a cross-post from AFF. The goal is to finally have this finished by *this* Halloween... fingers crossed.

**2011**

Hyukjae steps around the doorway to find where Donghae has gone. He’d mentioned something about comforting the parents, but Hyukjae knows that he just hadn’t wanted to be in the room. Restraining people has never been his favorite part, possession or no possession. 

There are voices murmuring in the hallway against a backdrop of summer crickets, soft lilts of worry. Donghae’s low, steady voice soothes them away. It would almost put Hyukjae to sleep, that familiar tone, if not for the fact that strapped to the bed in the room behind him is a boy not much younger than himself. Protection for them, not for the boy’s own safety – that was compromised long ago.

“…the best decision you could have made for him,” Donghae is saying when he approaches. Im Jin Oh’s mother is wringing a damp kerchief in her hands and nodding. One way or another, the months-long horror is going to be over for her family tonight, Hyukjae is certain of that at least. Whether Jin Oh is going to survive demonic possession is anyone’s guess. He could be gone already, and the thought is heavy on Hyukjae’s shoulders as she steps down the hall.

“Donghae,” he murmurs, and Donghae looks over his shoulder at him and nods. He stands up and takes Jin Oh’s mother’s hands in his own.

“Remember what I said: that is not your son in there. But we’re fighting for him. Stay out here, please.”

Back inside Jin Oh’s bedroom, Kyuhyun is fiddling with the camera and Siwon nods at them as they enter. Donghae shuts the door behind them, quiet even in the silence. On the bed, Jin Oh’s head gives a rolls lazily on its side to look at them, but doesn’t speak.

“Ready, Kyu?” Hyukjae asks. He nods and gives the thumbs-up. Donghae passes behind Siwon where he’s standing at the foot of the bed and claps a hand on his shoulder in greeting. He backs up to the wall and settles there to watch. Hyukjae doesn’t miss the way Jin Oh’s head follows Donghae around the room, nor the slight crease in Donghae’s forehead as he looks at the bed. Jin Oh is staring right past Siwon, but Donghae doesn’t make eye contact.

Siwon begins with a prayer, all four of them chorusing an  _Amen_  when he’s finished. Jin Oh flinches, but his gaze doesn’t waver from Donghae. It isn’t unusual for all the focus of a preternatural being to fall onto Donghae: he commands it simply by being in the room. Hyukjae is used to the way Donghae sees the world, but it’s always jarring when someone or something else acknowledges it.

“I’ll give you one last chance,” Siwon says, flipping through the pages of the book in his hand, “to leave this boy of your own free will.

“It’s useless, Siwon.” Donghae still doesn’t look at the bed when he says it, but Jin Oh’s face splits into a cocky grin.

“All right, then,” and Siwon launches into the Latin ritual – a call to the angels for help. Nothing much happens here; Hyukjae reaches into his pocket to fiddle with the small bottle of holy water there. Sometimes they need a little incentive.

But he doesn’t need it just yet. Siwon begins a psalm, and Jin Oh’s gaze finally snaps to him with a snarl. “ _Behold, He sends forth His Own Voice, the Voice of Virtue, Attribute the Virtue to God._.”

For a demon who hasn’t been very reactive so far, the response to this is violent. Jin Oh’s body lurches forward so fast that the leather straps on his wrists, ankles, and chest all snap at once. Hyukjae almost loses precious seconds in disbelief - the possessed have super human strength, but he’s never seen one bust through their restraints so quickly, or all at once. No wonder he had been quiet. He was saving up his energy.

Siwon is yelling at the demon to  _Be humble under the Powerful Hand of God, tremble and flee_ , but it’s having no effect. Hyukjae empties half the contents of his water bottle onto Jin Oh’s body. It flinches back violently, weakened enough that he can grab his arm and try to wrestle him back onto the bed. Kyuhyun and Donghae jump into action as well, Kyu on the other side of the bed while Donghae tries to hold down his legs. Hyukjae notices that the entire line of his body is rigid and his hold is weak. He snatches his hands back every now and then as if Jin Oh is too hot to touch.

It takes the rest of the water to keep the body from lurching forward again, Siwon’s demands for the demon to leave the body going unnoticed. His voice sounds muffled, like the air in the room is buzzing, and Hyukjae shakes his head to keep his focus.

From the corner of his eye he notices that Donghae is no longer in his line of vision. It’s not until the arm he’s holding down lies still that he glances back. There is still a loud white noise rushing through his ears, Siwon is still reading steadily from the Roman Rite, but Donghae has backed up into the wall. He's slumped against it like his knees have given out. “Hae?”

Donghae doesn’t look at him. He’s glassy-eyed, staring unfocused towards the bed and his eyes flutter in rapid half-blinks. The sight has Hyukjae’s already frantic heart rocketing blood through his veins in fear. “Stop,” Donghae says, voice small and scared, so quiet that Hyukjae wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t seen his lips move. “Stop!” he says again, louder, and Siwon’s chanting falters.

Jin Oh – no, the thing that has taken over Jin Oh’s body – sneers. “Keep going!” Hyukjae shouts, and Siwon snaps out of it and finds the next line.

Donghae has curled further into himself, whimpering “stop, stop,” and Hyukjae is two steps away from full-on panicking.  _Don’t panic, whatever happens, do not panic. If you can’t handle it, it's not shameful to leave the room._  - Hyukjae’s own words, spoken to countless people in countless situations, echoing back at him. Donghae keeps up his litany of “stop,” and “ _no_ ” through dry, cracked lips; his eyes have lost the watery sheen, still blinking rapidly and red-rimmed. The sweat that had been sticking his hair to the sides of his head seems to have dried up, leaving it flat and brittle against his forehead. His skin is pale, cheeks fever-bright.

 

“What the fuck,” Hyukjae says to himself, and then, shouting, “ _Donghae!_ ”

Siwon stops speaking. Everything happens at once.

Hyukjae’s loose grip on the still body is shaken off with ease, Kyuhyun on the other side thrown bodily to the floor as the thing inside Jin Oh takes advantage of the confusion. It launches itself across the room with no regard for propulsion, body limitations, or how limbs should work. Donghae slumps completely to the ground a with dry sob, fingernails scrabbling at the wall like he’s going to dig right through it. Hyukjae grabs wildy at Jin Oh’s shoulder and Siwon fumbles with holy water that barely makes him twitch. From the other side of the bed Kyuhyun picks himself off the floor, muttering “what the fuck, how, what the  _fuck_ ” and tries to drag Jin Oh down as best he can.

Jin Oh’s arms reach for Donghae, for Hyukjae’s  _Donghae_ , and grabs him roughly by the chin, forcing him to look at Jin Oh’s twisted sneer. Donghae screams.

It’s a sound wrenched out of him, a sound that goes straight to Hyukjae’s bones and makes his stomach lurch. He yanks hard at Jin Oh with a strength he didn’t know he was capable of and they topple backwards, Jin Oh and Hyukjae and Kyuhyun clattering in a heap against the camera’s tripod. It hits the floor with a decisive crunch. Siwon starts the exorcism rite again from the beginning, but Jin Oh isn’t struggling now. He just laughs, craning his head to look up at Donghae where he lies with his arms around his head, covering his ears. Jin Oh says, “You’re wrong,” as if picking up a long-ago conversation. “God is not with you.”

And then he just waits. Jin Oh’s eyes stare up at the ceiling on a face that looks nothing like the scared boy Hyukjae had first met two days ago while Siwon incants the exorcism, breath shaky but words clear. It waits, laughing to itself intermittently, and Hyukjae lets his head lull to rest on his own bicep, waiting too. The color of Jin Oh’s skin turns gray and ashy, fine like thin paper under Hyukjae’s hands, until the gray sloughs off the top of his skin and falls away like sawdust, there in one blink and gone in the next.

Jin Oh doesn’t move. Kyuhyun’s fingers slip to his neck and he announces that there’s still a pulse. Siwon, voice shaken, moves right onto prayers without a hitch as Hyukjae finally gets to Donghae. His whimpers had died off when the demon had and now he’s curled on the floor, eyes open and bloodshot.

“Donghae?” Hyukjae says, vision blurred. He wipes angrily at the wetness but gives up in favor of cradling his hand over the nape of Donghae’s neck, up the back of his head and over the curve of his forehead.

“Donghae?” His voice is strangled with tears.

Donghae blinks, eyes finally focusing and pupils dilating as he looks at Hyukjae’s face after what must be the whole space of an eternity. “Hyukjae?” he says, voice small and awed, and then falls unconscious.

It’s the last word he says for a very long time.

Siwon startles Hyukjae with a gentle touch to his shoulder. “You should get him home,” he offers.

“Siwon,” Hyukjae chokes out. He’s vaguely aware of Kyuhyun gathering up the shattered camera but avoids looking back at Jin Oh. “Siwon, what was that? What happened?”

He hesitates. “I… I wish I could tell you, Hyukjae. I’ve never seen anything like it. And for the love of God, it’s never going to happen again.”

Hyukjae just tips forward to press his forehead against Donghae’s, brushing hair out of his sleeping face.

“Let’s get him home,” Siwon says again. “I can take care of the family.”

Hyukjae nods.

-

Three days in and Hyukjae is trying to process the evidence for the casefile, flipping through photograph after photograph with unseeing eyes. His mind is upstairs, behind a closed door. Soon he gives up trying work and finds himself out in the hallway, staring at it.

He steps close, speaking into the wood. “Donghae? Donghae, please. Open the door.”

There’s no response. Inside, Hyukjae imagines that he’d find the same scene he was met with yesterday and the day before that: Donghae rolled up in his sheets, back to the door, breathing evenly but not moving. Not talking to anyone, looking at anyone, acknowledging anyone at all. Not even Hyukjae.

He puts a hand to the wood, fingertips running down the smooth surface and curling into a fist, his knuckles scraping against the door in frustration. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he can do, nothing.

On the eighth day Hyukjae slips inside at dawn like always with a bowl of rice and bottled water, and Donghae is sitting up in bed with the blankets draped over his shoulders. His face is pale and sallow, his hair dirty, but he is responsive for the first time in over a week. Hyukjae almost drops the rice in relief.

“Hyukjae,” Donghae says, hoarse.

“Yeah, Hae, I’m right here.”

“Is Jin Oh gone?”

Jin Oh had died under hospital care after lying comatose for three days following his exorcism. With a pang, he wonders if he should have told him sooner.

“Yes. He’s gone.”

Donghae looks up at Hyukjae then, eyes wet with tears. “We saved him from that. We saved him.”

Hyukjae doesn’t know what to say. He sets down the food and water and comes to the edge of the bed,presses his knees into the mattress on either side of Donghae’s thighs, and pulls him into a hug. With a gentle hand, he pushes Donghae’s wet face into his shoulder. The heaviness that had been weighing Hyukjae down settles into a deep grief and he’s not holding Donghae close enough – never close enough to protect him from the things Hyukjae can’t experience. He wants to be angry; angry that this happened to him, angry that the other side is so relentless in its corruption and horror, but he can’t be. Not only because they would feed off his anger, or that it would only make Donghae susceptible to more danger. He wants to be angry because the sorrow sits too solidly in his throat to make room for anything else.

“Yeah, we did, we saved him. Donghae. I love you. I love you so much.”

Donghae slips his arms around Hyukjae’s ribcage and cries.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Some quick notes for this chapter regarding children's games in Korea: sam pul sun is like a cross between capture the flag and freeze tag; eoreum ddaeng is actually freeze tag, and jegi is similar to hackey sack; jegi were traditionally made with cloth and a coin or stone in the center. I am not Korean, if I get any of this wrong and you want to call me out on it, please do so.

**2014**

When Kangin rolls down the drive to the new house, it’s the first time all day there's been silence in the car. Shindong breaks it, pushing his way between the two front seats and staring out the window with wide eyes.

“Are you serious?”

Then it's mayhem as usual. Sungmin is the only to have seen the property since Kangin and Leeteuk signed the loan, so the reaction from the other four kids isn’t unexpected. Yesung shouts that he claims the biggest room while Kibum pulls Shindong back into his seat with a gentle hand. Kangin catches Leeteuk in a sidelong gaze, rolling his eyes and matching Leeteuk's little smile with one of this own.

The moving truck rumbles to a stop beside the car and the passenger door opens, Sungmin swinging down from the side with a wave in their direction. “All right, calm down!” Kangin says. “Time to unpack.” A collective groan sounds from the back of the car.

It doesn’t go as well as planned. Well, it goes with pretty much the exact amount of chaos that's expected from four kids under the age of 13.

“Why can’t we pick our rooms first?” Yesung whines, holding a box that’s larger than his torso.

“Might be better to get them out of the way for now,” Kangin says to Leeteuk under his breath, who nods and hands the box he’s carrying off to Sungmin.

“Okay, okay,” Leeteuk concedes with a sharp clap of his hands. “First, a head count. Sungmin?”

Sungmin’s already halfway into the house. “One!” he calls over his shoulder.

They go from there: Shindong, Kibum, and Yesung with a cheerful “Four,” bouncing on his heels.

“Four, hmm. Who are we missing?” Leeteuk taps his chin in thought and turns to Kangin, who shrugs. There’s a tug on the bottom hem of his shirt, but he ignores it.

“I guess that’s it, right?” The tugging becomes more insistent.

“Only four kids now, huh. Oh well!”

“Me!” comes a shout from down around his legs. “Don’t forget me!”

Kangin looks down. “Oh! Ryeowook, there you are. I didn’t hear your number.”

“Five!” he chirps, panic in his sweet voice. Leeteuk chuckles and gives in, crouching down to Ryeowook’s level.

“We just don’t want to lose you, okay? You can go play, but stick by Yesung and the others.” Ryeowook nods. Yesung comes over to take his small hand in his and they run off into the house.

Kangin stretches his back while Leeteuk brushes the dirt off his jeans. He blinks into the sunlight, the bright noon sun washing out his vision. It’s going to be a long day hauling boxes and furniture, but he doesn’t mind all that much. They finally have a place big enough for all seven of them and with room to spare. Not to mention privacy. Safety. As safe as they can get, given their situation.

Moving is exhausting. Moving with five kids, and Kangin feels like he's just run a marathon. Leeteuk is quiet beside him, for once not trying to move three steps ahead of himself, and they take a moment to breathe.

It’s a beautiful, sprawling hanok style home. If Kangin is going to believe the records, the foundations have been standing for over 100 years, but hell if he knows which parts are original and which have been rebuilt. It’s not completely traditional: four buildings forming a square shaped house, with the courtyard roofed over and renovated into a common room. Two L-shaped buildings extend as wings with individual bedrooms. The intent of the previous owners was that it be a guesthouse, but the realtor had told them it wasn’t lucrative and they sold it just to recoup their losses.

It must have been some loss. They had rebuilt so much of the hanok that it looks like new. Each room has access from the inside and the outside along the two wings, there's a completely refurbished kitchen, and most of the house came already furnished.

“Dream come true, eh?” Leeteuk’s words shake him into the present.

“Yeah.”

Chuckling under his breath, Leeteuk sets a smacking kiss on the side of Kangin's head, then pushes him away. “Come on. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

-

 

“I’m older, so it’s my room.”

“Yeah, but you should be setting an example! How will I know how to be a good hyung if mine is selfish?”

“You can room with Sungmin, he’ll teach you how to be a good hyung.”

“I’m not rooming with anyone.” Sungmin sets a box down with a  _thud_ , his name scrawled in thick letters across the side. “This is my room, you two have the one across the hall.”

Kibum and Shindong stare at him, mouths agape. “What!” Shindong says. “But you’re leaving in two months!”

“Exactly. After that, Shindong moves in here. Then you both get your own rooms.”

Footsteps come pounding down the hall and Yesung slides around the doorframe, out of breath and holding up a cloth napkin. “Look what we found,” he says, Ryeowook trailing into the room after him. “Want to play?”

This is how Sungmin winds up refereeing a game of sam pul sun. With only two players on each team, it becomes an elaborate version of the game, spread out between the two wings of the house. The invisible border line is in the center of the common room. Sungmin crosses this line at least six times while carrying boxes around the house, and each time one of the boys is sitting crossly near the border, waiting to be unfrozen by their teammate. They all argue with Sungmin about how unfair it is to be caught this close to the border and he offers to trade places, holding out a box. None of them take him up on his offer.

At five, Leeteuk leaves and comes back with more food than he can carry. It’s all eaten in record time, and he collapses back on the bare kitchen floor when the kids have all run off to resume their game, exhausted.

“Let’s not do this again.”

Kangin laughes and kicks at all the empty containers. They should clean up. Really. Any moment now. “Let’s save the furniture for tomorrow. I’m not assembling anything until I’ve had a good night’s rest.”

“Mm,” Leeteuk agrees lazily.

Ryeowook shuffles back into the kitchen. “Hey, kid,” Kangin says, and Ryeowook smiles his flat-mouthed smile, cheeks puffing out. “I found this,” he says, and holds out his hand, some small token on his palm.

Leeteuk hauls himself off the floor to take it. “What is this?”

Ryeowook shrugs. “Kibum-hyung almost got the flag. But it wasn’t there. It was this.”

It takes a moment before Leetuek figures out what it is he’s holding. At first it just looks like a knotted tangle of dirty cloth and he wonders if it got dragged in from outside somewhere, but the longer he stares, the more sense he makes out of it. He pokes his fingers between the tassled, threadbare edges and finds a weighted center.

“Jegi,” he says, and Kangin makes a hum of understanding. “This thing’s dirty, Ryeowookie, whose is it?”

“Nobody’s.” Leeteuk looks up to see Kibum hovering in the doorway. “We haven’t unpacked anything. We thought you knew.”

Leeteuk curls the thing in his palm and shrugs. “Well, game’s over anyway, you guys have to unpack.”

Fueled by dinner, they do end up getting most of the kids’ things unpacked that night. They have to save their own bedroom for last, and although they're exhausted, it’s not too hard to get through. They leave their clothes in boxes for now. It makes him feel a bit itchy, like he's not putting as much effort into this as he could be. He tells himself that there’s going to be plenty of time to settle in. Still, they’ve been planning this for so long that Leeteuk just wants to be moved in already. He wants to get the next chapter of this life of theirs started.

The night is so much quieter out here than it is in Seoul. Leeteuk thinks the quiet is going to be easier to get used to than he expected. He's going to fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, though, so the first night is not the best predictor of what's to come.

He drops another box of clothes onto the pile in the corner of the room and lets out a long breath when he stands, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow. Kangin’s arms wrap around his waist from behind and Leeteuk leans back, lets Kangin take some of the weight off his feet.

“Tired?”

“Hmm. Long day.”

Kangin chuckles. “No kidding.” His arms unwind, skimming across the front of Leeteuk’s waist until his hands settle on his hips. “Want to christen the new house?”

Leeteuk laughs breathlessly. “Not if you want me to fall asleep in the middle of sex,” he says, turning around to watch Kangin’s eyes crinkle up when with his answering laughter.

“Okay, okay, you make a good point.”

“All my points are good.” Yawning, Leeteuk sways forward, draping his arms around Kangin's shoulders. They stand listening to the silence for a while, and then Leeteuk says a quiet, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not letting me go insane during this move.”

“You did that yourself. Park Jungsu and his meticulous planning. I’m impressed.”

“As always.”

“As always,” Kangin concedes, pressing a soft kiss to Leeteuk’s mouth. Leeteuk kisses back in instinct, but has to pull back to yawn again. Kangin says, “Okay, we’ll sleep. Before I start thinking you just find me boring.”

Leeteuk rolls his eyes and shuffles over to the bed, lifting his shirt off. It's cold in the room, but he doesn't want to have to open another damn box until morning, so his sleep clothes are just going to have to stay packed. “Everyone was in their rooms when I checked, do you want to go make sure they’re all settled in?”

“Yep.”

Leeteuk lets himself fall on top of the bed just before he hears Kangin say, “Teuk?” from the doorway. He glances up. “Thank you,” Kangin says, voice just as quiet as Leeteuk’s had been before. He doesn’t have to say for what.

He’s half asleep when the lights shut off and Kangin slides into the bed beside him. “The kids are fine,” he murmurs, and Leeteuk finally lets himself drop off to sleep.

-

 

The alarm winds its way into Leeteuk’s dreams. He surfaces, frowning, and pokes at the screen of his phone until the sound stops. Something unsettling sets his nerves on edge. Leeteuk stares at the unfamiliar ceiling, trying to catch the dream he’d been having. He decides that the odd feeling is just a result waking up in a new place. The alarm goes off again. Damn, he’d hit snooze. Leeteuk sits up, leaving the phone for Kangin to deal with and hauling his sleep-heavy body to the bathroom.

The mirror is disorienting. He squints at it, his reflection multiplied and askew. Sleep rushes clear from his head  when he realizes that the mirror is  _broken_. Leeteuk blinks. The cracks in the glass spider out from the edges of the frame, unlike the way broken glass would look if something had hit it; there's not point of impact, no shattering. It looks more like the miror had been squeezed into a frame that is too small, or like someone slammed it onto the wall.

The muffled alarm shuts off again. “Hey, Youngwoon?” he calls softly. “Was this mirror broken yesterday?”

Kangin shuffles in behind him, his reflection appearing on the broken mirror alongside Leeteuk’s. “Uh. I don’t remember. That’s weird.”

He makes a mental note to replace the mirror, but he forgets about it when he hears a scuffle coming from out in the hallway. Pulling a shirt on over his head, he heads out to break up whatever fight his kids have gotten into  _already_.

“It’s not me!” Kibum is shouting, looking more flustered than he usually gets.

“Well what else is it! You should take a bath sometime, don’t blame it on me!” Shindong counters. “This is why I didn’t want to room with you.”

“What are you even… that's a lie! Come on, you know I shower.”

The door across the hall slides open and Sungmin leans out of his room, hissing, “Hey, shut up, Teukie and Kangin-hyung are sleeping! Oh, hey. Nevermind.” He nods at Leeteuk. The other two turn to look.

“Sorry,” Shindong mumbles, and Kibum doesn’t say anything, mouth tight, glaring at the floor like he’s trying to calm himself down.

“Okay, what’s going on and why can’t you solve it without yelling?” Leeteuk asks.

“He said I smell,” Kibum mutters.

“He does, it’s gross!”

“It’s not me! It’s the house!”

Leeteuk sighs. “Kibum, you smell fine. Shindong, don’t pick fights, okay? We’re all stressed out because of the move, don’t add to it.”

Kibum shuffles his feet. “He’s… he’s not making it up. It really does smell bad in our room.”

Curious, Leeteuk heads toward their room, the two boys at his heels. He doesn’t even make it into the room before he can smell something that reminds him of rotten eggs. Inside, the smell is even worse, like uncured meat that’s gone bad. “Okay, I have no idea what that smell is but you’re both forgiven. Open the windows, we’ll let it air out. Smells like something died in the walls.”

Kangin appears behind him, frowning. “Please tell me nothing actually died in the walls. We haven’t even lived here for a day.”

Leeteuk heaves a sigh.

“I hate to say it, but that’s not all,” says Sungmin. “The mirror in my bathroom is broken.”

Leeteuk meets Kangin’s alarmed expression with one of his own.

“What?” Sungmin says into the awkward pause.

“Ours is broken too.”

As it turns out, all the mirrors in the house are cracked around the edges. None of them are are as badly broken as the mirror in Leeteuk and Kangin’s en suite bathroom, but by the time Kangin returns from the empty wing of bedrooms with a grim confirmation that they’re all broken, Leeteuk is starting to get upset.

“Are you sure they weren’t like that when we signed the contract?”

"We would have noticed. It's... strange," Kangin admits.

There isn't anything they can do about it. Leeteuk stares at his broken reflection, unable to shake the feeling of unease that has been following him around all morning.

"Come on." Kangin takes him by the wrist and leads him down the hall. "Let's round up the kids and go buy food, okay? And new mirrors."

Leeteuk grins. "Sound off!" he shouts. This was easier when they lived in a smaller space, but he still hears Sungmin shout "One!" from the kitchen, then answering shouts from the other boys as they all make their way to the front of the house.

"All right," Kangin says with a clap of his hands. "Time to buy food." Everyone scrambles for their shoes. Leeteuk feels better already.

-

 

The sun is hanging low enough in the sky to tinge the roomin a warm glow, the sound of the kids playing tag drift in through an open window, and Kangin is never going to build another piece of furniture in his life.

“We're supposed to use six of these screws, how could they only give us four?” he gripes, counting the screws for the hundredth time. Sungmin grabs the instruction booklet.

“That’s because you’re looking at bag number 12 when you should be looking at bag number 15. Here, I think those screws are for Leeteuk’s cabinets,” he says. He digs around in the box for the correct bag of six screws and tosses them into Kangin’s lap.

“Oh, I was looking for those,” says Leeteuk, plucking the four little screws out of Kangin’s hand as he stares at Sungmin in shock.

“That’s it. That’s it! No more, I’m done, go on without me.” Leeteuk pats him on the thigh absently and goes back to assembling his cabinet.

Sungmin laughs. He leans back on his hands, listening to Yesung’s increasingly agitated shouts of  _eoreum!_  outside the window, followed by the sound of Shindong cackling. “You know, we could have done this sooner. This place is awesome and I only get to live here for a few months.”

“Well, you don’t  _have_  to go to university,” Kangin says.

“Actually, I do.”

“Good point.”

“Stop!” Leeteuk says, “Don’t talk about it.”

“Aw, Teuk.” Kangin leans over and gives a gentle tug on Leeteuk’s ear, “You’re getting upset. Look, Sungmin, you made him cry.”

Leeteuk covers his face with his hands. “I’m not crying!”

“You are. Look at how red your face is.”

Leeteuk shakes his head, lowering his arms. His face is indeed red, but he’s grinning. He looks at Sungmin and might be halfway to tears, but he’s not going to admit it. In a few months his oldest is going to be living on his own, and it's hard to believe that it’s been nine years since he and Kangin adopted him. Nine years already, and four more adoptions, in spite of all the odds.

“I’ll be fine.”

“See, he’ll be fine. And there will be one less mouth to feed.”

“Hey,” Sungmin deadpans, flipping through the instruction booklet.

Leeteuk picks up the bag of screws Kangin discarded and starts to finish the entertainment center he had been working on. “Well," he sighs, "we won’t have anyone to keep the kids busy.”

Sungmin freezes. “Don’t.”

Kangin ignores him. “Oh, that’s true,” he gripes. “I thought the point of buying this place was so that we’d all have more space. But no, we _still_  can’t have sex without worrying about all the children down the hall.”

“Oh my god!” Sungmin cries, dropping the booklet in favor of covering his ears with his hands.

“I wonder how soundproof the bedrooms are,” Leeteuk muses, and Sungmin shouts, “You are deranged! Both of you!” and stands up, storming out of the room. The sound of Leeteuk’s laughter follows him down the hall.

-

 

Kangin turns the car down the long drive, headlights swinging to light his way, and feels the kind of happy exhaustion that only comes when you know you’re home again. It’s weird, leaving Seoul behind and knowing he isn’t leaving his family this time, but going back to them. He’s only been away for two days, but it felt so much longer. He hadn't wanted to go back so soon after the move, but there had been some loose ends to tie up with the job transfer.

He kicks off his shoes and shouts a hello into the entryway, frowning slightly at the silence.

“Hello?” he calls again. Leeteuk comes around the corner from the common room, an expression on his face that Kangin can’t read. Which is worrying, because he can usually read Leeteuk like a book. “Oh, hey. Everything okay?”

“I’m not sure,” Leeteuk says, still watching him with an odd look. His eyes dart to the side and he inclines his head back the way he came. “We’re eating in there. The kitchen stinks.”

“Not the kitchen, too?” Kangin says; how many pests are living and dying in the walls?

“I wish I was joking. There’s… there’s more, but I don’t want to bring it up with the kids listening. They're been kind of scared, I don't want to remind them why.”

“I was only gone for two days, what the hell happened in here?” Kangin follows Leeteuk into the common room without waiting for an answer. Everyone choruses a hello in his direction, Sungmin waving at him with a flat, humorless smile. Only Ryeowook beams, almost knocking over his bowl in his haste to hug Kangin. “Hey, kid! Did you miss me?”

Ryeowook seems to be the only one, as far as he can tell. Shindong is poking at his food with a downcast expression and Kibum is giving him worried glances every few seconds. When Leeteuk hands Kangin a plate, Yesung gets out of his seat to take Ryeowook by the hand, leading him back to the circle of boys surrounding dinner on the floor.

Kangin sets the plate down as soon as he takes it. “Explain.”

Leeteuk scratches the back of his head, sighing, and before he can say anything, Shindong interrupts. “Just tell him. I'm going to have nightmares anyway.”

“He saw something,” Leeteuk says quickly, which is an excellent distraction technique because Kangin immediately feels guilty – how could he let Shindong have nightmares? Never mind that he couldn’t possibly be the cause of that or protect him from it in any way, but he’s never claimed to be rational when it comes to his children. “Last night, in his room. He was pretty upset.”

“Something?”

“Some _one_ ,” Shindong cuts in. And they said –“ His voice chokes.

“Kibum?” Leeteuk promts, and Kibum tears his eyes away from Shindong and sighs. “I didn’t see anything. He woke me up because he was yelling at someone to leave him alone and I thought he was just being annoying. I believe him now.” He says the last in a small, ashamed voice.

“Did you call the police?” Kangin asks, alarmed. He wants to demand to know why Leeteuk didn’t call him immediately, but he knows better than to question his judgment.

“There wasn’t anyone there.”

“There was!” Shindong insists.

“Shh, I know, that’s not what I mean.” Leeteuk rubs Shindong on the back apologetically. “I thought he was dreaming and confused, but I don’t know, Kangin. I don’t see why he would lie.”

“It was a ghost,” Kibum says, and the whole room grows quiet, like he’d just spoken aloud what everyone was thinking.

“Right,” Kangin laughs. “A ghost.” Nobody laughs with him.

“Everyone, eat your dinners. Kangin, come here,” Leeteuk says. Kangin follows him back into the hallway and watches him lean against the wall, looking exhausted. “I know it sounds insane but as soon as you left, things were just. Odd. I woke up the night before last because Shindong was  _screaming_ , Kangin, and I couldn’t even get the door to his room open. I had no idea what was happening, it scared me half to death. Then the door opened and it was freezing in there, and Kibum was staring at Shindong like… like…”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I just think there has to be a good explanation for this.”

“I know, so did I. Shindong won’t say much, but Kibum says he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. I know there’s something Shindong isn’t telling me, but I can’t get him to open up about it. And then I could have sworn I heard someone knocking on my door at three in the morning, and I expected it to be Shindong wanting to sleep in our room, but nobody was even awake. He and Kibum were sharing beds with Yesung and Ryeowook. And what’s even stranger is that I heard the knocking again last night, one o’clock on the dot. And then again at two. And at three.”

Kangin rubs a hand over his face. “Look, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but…”

“You don’t believe me?”

Leeteuk is smiling when Kangin looks, which relaxes some of the tension in his shoulders. “It just has to be a coincidence, or you’re looking for things that aren’t there. It’s a new house.”

“I know, believe me, I know. And I thought it was all in my head, but Kibum told me he’s been hearing the knocking too.”

“A draft?”

“I don’t know about that. Could be, but it just doesn’t seem likely. I can’t explain it.”

Silence stretches on in the hallway. The walls are dim, the sounds of dishes clinking together in the other room seem as normal as any other night, but Kangin has a house full of people who are suddenly convinced it’s haunted and doesn’t know what to do about it.

“I’m sorry you had to come home to this,” Leeteuk says. “Just humor me on this tonight, and if nothing else happens, I promise that we’ll never speak of it again.”

Kangin eyes him knowingly. He’s about to open his mouth to tell him that in a couple of weeks this is all going to be a silly memory, but then Sungmin comes into the hallway carrying a stack of bowls.

“Welcome back,” he says sarcastically.

“Sungmin, what do you think of all this?” Kangin calls as he carries the dishes back down toward the kitchen.

He turns his back as he walks, shaking his head sadly. “Sorry, hyung. I’m with everyone else on this. You bought a haunted house.”

Kangin growls in frustration. At least it makes Leeteuk laugh.

-

 

“Sit,” Leeteuk insists, checking his phone.

“Teuk, come on, it’s the kids.”

“It’s not the kids, they don’t know anything about it. You know Kibum wouldn’t lie.”

“He’d lie to Sungmin,” Kangin mumbles, petulant. When Leeteuk looks over he’s picking at his nails with careful disinterest.

“He would absolutely not lie to Sungmin. He might collaborate with him, but he would give in and tell the truth if I pressed. And I pressed, Youngwoon. When I asked Shindong he looked like – well, he looked like he’d just seen a ghost.”

Kangin sighs and scoots over on the bed to leave a spot for Leeteuk. “Okay, fine, let’s see what happens.”

Leeteuk stares down at his phone and sits again. “Two minutes.”

“One in the morning, though? One exactly? Come on, that’s the witching hour. Sungmin has been scaring the kids with that since he was thirteen.”

“Well, they don’t call it the witching hour for nothing.” Leeteuk grips his phone and stares at the doorway, waiting. He guesses they have about thirty seconds left. Kangin doesn’t seem convinced, but he watches the door dutifully.

_Bang, bang, bang._  One o’clock on the dot. The sound sends a shock straight up Leeteuk’s spine, but he swallows a breath and checks Kangin’s reaction. His expression goes from shock to anger in half a second. He shoots off the bed, sliding the door open with such force that it bounces halfway closed again before Kangin’s open palm stops it.

There’s no one on the other side. Leeteuk watches from his spot on the bed, peering around the space Kangin is taking up in the doorway. In the space of a heartbeat – the time it takes for Kangin’s anger to deflate into confusion – all three doors along the hallway fly open on their hinges with a clang so loud that Leeteuk’s heart jumps into his throat.

He moves forward on instinct to pull Kangin away from the doorway; Kangin stumbles back a step, mouth open in shock. A moment later Sungmin steps out if his open door, still dressed in jeans, his eyes wide in a mirror of Kangin’s expression. They all meet gazes for only a second and then Sungmin strides across the hall to check in Shindong and Kibum’s room. A second later, Yesung, who is a heavy sleeper on any normal night, steps out of the other room with sleep-mussed hair. He heads straight for Kangin, wrapping his hand in the hem of his shirt and burying his face in his hip. The hand still holding onto the edge of the door slips down to rub Yesung’s back.

Leeteuk slips past them, heart still pounding, to check in on Ryeowook. The child awake, sitting up in the bed with a solemn expression that no five-year old should ever wear.

Sungmin steps back into the hallway. “They slept through it.”

“Wake them up. It’s going to come again in an hour. Grab your blankets, we’ll have a sleepover.” Leeteuk tries for a smile but it isn’t returned. Kangin gives a game trial at it, but his mouth twists into more of a grimace than a smile. He nods, Yesung still clinging to him, and mouths  _I’m sorry_. Leeteuk shakes his head, heartbeat beginning to find its normal rhythm, and goes to collect Ryeowook.

It takes them a while to settle down, but nobody is crying so he counts that for a win. The center of the common room becomes a mess of blankets and bodies, lights on in the hallways casting a shadow of daytime into the room. Leeteuk can't sleep. At two, he can hear it. Muffled, but still there: the bedroom doors all shaking on their hinges once, twice, three times. He holds his breath, Ryeowook tucked in his lap sleeping, and glances beside him. Kangin is awake, lying with an arm behind his head and Yesung curled up beside him. He catches Leeteuk's eye. There's nothing to say. He hopes that Kangin had been right, that this will all end up as a distant memory. Hopes that he hadn't just put his family in danger. He holds Ryeowook just a little bit tighter.


	3. Chapter 3

**2014**

Donghae wakes up to a silent room, feeling like he hasn’t slept. He doesn’t remember getting into bed and he lies still for a moment, trying to remember what day it is. Swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress, he crumples the bedsheets in his hands as his eyes roam to land on the small suitcase on the floor. Oh, now he remembers.

According to his phone it’s a little before eight. That puts him at around probably five hours of sleep, and he silently thanks Hyukjae for letting him lie in for that long. He remembers now, hazy with sleep and the dimness that comes with memories of late night activities – he couldn’t sleep and had packed both their suitcases instead, finally rolling into bed to watch Hyukjae’s shoulders rise and fall, slow and even. He must have drifted off.

Donghae realizes then that he’s freaking starving.

He stops just before entering the kitchen. At the table, Ara seems to be telling a story to Hyukjae that Donghae has no hope of following. She’s been talking a lot lately, happily stringing sentences together in a way that must only make sense to a three-year old. Or to Hyukjae, who almost always knows exactly what she’s talking about and claims it’s because he’s been translating Donghae’s ramblings for so long.

Hyukjae is sitting across from her with his back to Donghae, alternating between humming thoughtfully at key points in her story and casually handing her pieces of steamed egg to eat in between sentences. Her hair is a mess and her eyes are still puffy with sleep; eventually Donghae realizes that she’s recounting her dream to Hyukjae in extreme detail.

“But I couldn’t get on the train, because… Choco was barking.”

“Oh. I thought Choco was in the car?” Hyukjae reaches across the table to stick a spoon into the little bowl of rice that has gone untouched in front of Ara, and he tilts the handle toward her.

“No, no, no, no,” Ara says, distracted for a moment as she grips the spoon handle with her small fingers. “Not the car. The bed! The train was the bed.”

“Right, I see,” Hyukjae says, looking up as Donghae steps into the kitchen, skirting around the table to stand behind Ara’s chair. He runs a hand through her tangled hair and she tilts her head back to look up at him, the spoon now sticking out of her mouth, and Donghae smiles at her before he meets Hyukjae’s eyes and mouths a  _good morning._  Hyukjae smiles and continues. “And then you woke up?”

“Mm, yes.” Ara concentrates on picking up another spoonful of rice.

“I saw you packed the suitcases,” Hyukjae says, leaning back now that Ara is focused on breakfast.

Donghae digs the last of the rice out of the cooker. “Yeah, so that’s out of the way.” He sits down at the table, raising his eyebrows at Hyukjae and tilting his head in Ara’s direction. Hyukjae shakes his head mutely. So, packing finished, but they still haven’t told her that they’re going to be away all weekend. Donghae winces inwardly; they need to stop doing that. But he hates to see her when she’s upset, and it’s harder to ignore her energy when her sadness is directed right at him.

“Eat,” Hyukjae says, standing from the table. “I’m going to shower first and then get Ara dressed, we have like, an hour.”

Ara’s sleepy eyes follow him when he leaves and Donghae can see the little gears turning in her head. He tugs gently at the short ends of her hair to distract her. “Woah, messy! Did a bird fly in and sleep in your hair?”

“What!” she shouts, eyes wide with concern until she sees Donghae laughing. She giggles, confused, and then the confusion melts away and she says, “Birds, seriously,” with a little shake of her head. It’s exactly the fond, weary way that Hyukjae sounds when Donghae has said something ridiculous, and Donghae grins to himself as the two of them finish their breakfast. The last of the dull heaviness that had kept him awake last night eases itself off his shoulders to the sound of gently clanging spoons and the swish of Ara’s dangling feet.

-

 

Donghae steps into the hallway with hair still damp from his shower just in time to catch Ara as she runs toward him, Choco at her feet. A leash is still dangling from the little dog’s collar.

“Hey, don’t run,” he chides, crouching down to her level. He pushes loose strands of hair back behind her ear where they’ve fallen out of her barrette. “Where’s your Hyukkie?” She only giggles as Choco nudges between them, eager to lick at Donghae’s face. Probably just happy to have an empty bladder, but Donghae fluffs up the fur on her head with affection.

Hyukjae rounds the corner, still wearing his shoes. “You ready?”

Donghae nods, lifting Ara and settling her on his hip. “Hey, guess what?” he asks her. “You’re going to play with Byunghun this weekend!”

Her face lights up and she chirps, “Byun!” Donghae feels the moment that her delight turns to suspicion; sees it in a subtle change in the color of her energy more than he sees it on her expression. It must show in that way, though, because Hyukjae comes over and rubs a hand down her back. She twists to look at him.

“Hyukkie, will you play with Byun too?”

“Not this time. It will be just you and Byunghun-oppa and Choco, okay?”

Donghae sucks in a breath and has to hand her over to Hyukjae when what he’s saying starts to sink in, the timbre of Ara’s energy taking a nosedive. She goes easily, but says “Appa?” in a thin voice.

He shakes his head. “I won’t be here either. Only until tomorrow, and then we’ll be home.”

The doorbell rings just then, thankfully, and Donghae goes to let Byunghun inside. He’s been watching Ara for over a year now, and although Hyukjae’s parents would be more than happy to take her, they know that the shop suffers every time they do. And anyway, it’s only for the night.

“Hi, hyung,” Byunghun chirps when he opens the door, peering around Donghae to smile and dip his head at Hyukjae as well. His school bag is slung over his shoulder, which Donghae suspects to be stuffed more with children’s books than his course textbooks. “Hi, Ara!,” he adds. “How’s my favorite girl!”

Ara leans out of Hyukjae’s hold, eyes still shiny with tears but reaching out towards Byunghun anyway. And that’s another reason he’s perfect to watch her – she has the most adorable toddler crush on her babysitter. “Byun!”

Hyukjae settles her on the floor and straightens the hem of her shirt. “Be polite, Ara.”

She puts her hands behind her back and bows, hair swishing forward as she does so. “Hello, Byung’n-oppa!”

Byunghun humors them, mimicking her actions before she barrels forward to hug him around his legs. He laughs. “So, you’ll be back tomorrow afternoon?”

Donghae brushes past the three of them, ducking into the bedroom to run a comb through his hair and grab the suitcases. He listens with half an ear to Hyukjae telling Byunghun their hotel details and schedule, but most of his concentration is on shutting out the energy signals coming from the hallway. It’s usually not a problem  - he hadn’t even registered Byunghun’s aura, and Hyukjae’s was easy to tune out. It mostly blends into his own, matching Donghae’s guilt at leaving Ara behind. Ara’s is harder – much harder, because he spends a lot of time attuned to her, but hasn’t learned how to block it out just yet. It’s as if she’s operating on a different wavelength, and Donghae has a hard time of staying objective about it.

Hyukjae is kissing her goodbye when Donghae carries their bags into the hallway. Her mouth is twisted into a frown, but at least she isn’t crying. It makes it easier for Donghae to kiss her on the top of her head. “Have fun, we love you,” he says with a smile. She only lays her head on Byunghun’s shoulder and lets her arms hang, looking at him sadly.

“I’ll call you when we’re on our way back,” Hyukjae tells Byunghun, who attemps to get a sullen Ara to wave goodbye as they leave.

Donghae keeps expecting it to get easier every time they leave, but it never does. He and Hyukjae had stopped investigating completely when the adoption went through, but after the first year they knew they had to start taking cases again. Siwon had called, asked them to check out a potential infestation, and they had gone.

Not after a lot of convincing on Donghae’s part, however. Nowadays, Hyukjae likes it better when their cases are false, when they involve settling the fears in the minds of frightened people or teaching others awareness and how to protect themselves. This will be the third seminar they’ve given in as many months, with potentially the largest audience they’ve ever gotten outside of Seoul. He just wishes they didn’t have to travel so far.

“You okay?” Hyukjae asks, paused in front of the driver’s side door.

Donghae snaps out of it, tossing their bags into the backseat. He smiles easily. “Yeah. Just, you know.”

Hyukjae nods and opens his door. Donghae slides into the passenger seat and pulls out his phone. “Have you heard from Kyuhyun?”

“Yep, he’s on his way. And so are we.” The engine rumbles to life.

It won’t be so bad, getting out of the city for a bit, Donghae muses. He listens to Hyukjae hum along with the radio and looks forward to the quiet countryside.

 

-

 

The sound of clattering pans and voices thread down the hallway. Leeteuk’s family making dinner, loud as always, maybe even louder – like a light on in the hallway, a reminder of safety. He should be in there with them, laughing and pretending everything is fine. Leeteuk trails his fingers along the wall absently. The common room is empty now, all of them deciding they’d rather sleep in beds again, even the little ones nodding along and carrying their blankets to their new rooms. The spare wing seemed like a better idea than their normal rooms.

“It’s safe in this wing,” Kangin had said, but it didn’t really settle his nerves. He doesn’t like the reminder that anywhere else could be dangerous. This was Leeteuk’s idea. This was their dream.

It’s going to be fine.

“Food’s ready!” chirps a small voice, and Leeteuk turns to see Ryeowook smiling at him from the other end of the hall. Kangin pokes his head out of the kitchen, expression more concerned than the five-year old’s.

“Come on, Teuk. Let’s eat.”

Leeteuk has dinner with his family, bright and loud, and thinks maybe he’s not lying to himself. Maybe everything will be fine, after all.

-

 

A sound wakes him. Leeteuk pushes himself upright, listening to the sheets rustling on the bed as he moves, breathing in the quiet darkness of the room. He’s drowsy, head filled with sleep sand, and he yawns to keep himself awake. He swings his legs off the side of the bed and stretches a little, wincing as he rubs a hand across his chest. Fingers dip under the collar of his shirt, skimming gently over a bruise. He doesn’t remember how it happened, but it’s been blooming there since this morning, long like a shadow at dusk. The sound comes again. It’s a child’s voice.

Leeteuk sighs, fumbling for his phone and squinting at it. It’s just about 1:30. He gets to his feet, sliding the door open quietly so he doesn’t wake Kangin. He can’t blame the kids for not being able to fall asleep, but he can’t help the rush of annoyance at the noise they’re making. Shouldn’t they know better? There’s a time to be rowdy. The early hours of the night is not that time.

A voice floats down the hall again, “ _Eureum! _”__ and Leeteuk doesn’t bother to keep his steps light as he goes down the hallway. “Hey, who’s awake? Don’t you know how loud you’re being?” he says irritably, following the sound of their game into the common room. It’s empty, and his annoyance rises; are they really going to play this game with him? Are they going to run and hide? He tries the front hallway, wanders into the kitchen, still hears nothing. Finally it comes again, louder,  _ _ _"Eureum!___ ” and Leeteuk whips his head to follow the voice. Back in the common room again.

It’s still empty. “Kids?” he asks. Nothing. Leeteuk stands in front of the fireplace, trying to sort through his head. At this point he’s willing to admit that he could be hearing things, as the natural sounds of the house haven’t become background noise to him yet. They haven’t lived here quite long enough, and the time they have been living here has mostly been spent with heightened awareness. A living house. Leeteuk rubs his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. A breathing house is not meant to be so literal.

He hears the sound of a laugh and freezes, listening hard. He strains, stays very still, wondering if he imagined that, too.

“ _Ddaeng!_ ”

Leeteuk whirls. The voice had been right there, right in his ear, louder than life and his heart pounds in shock; nobody is there, nobody is here in the room, but the  _voice_  -

And then, unmistakable, shouting from the guest wing. Leeteuk is slow to react, shock rooting him to the spot where a frost-like cold continues to spread into his bones. The shout is panicked, frantic; Sungmin’s voice. Leeteuk breaks into a run.

-

 

Kangin is confused to find himself awake. He rolls over to find the other side of the bed empty, palming at the space where Leeteuk should be, and as he moves, notices Yesung standing by the door.

“Hey bud,” Kangin says roughly, voice thick with sleep. He clears his throat. “You okay? Something scare you?”

Yesung doesn’t answer. “C’mon,” Kangin tries, motioning towards the bed, but Yesung still doesn’t move. He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs at them, blinking them open to find that Yesung is still hovering by the door, still and quiet. He’s being limned in the light in the hallway. But – no, the bedroom door is closed.

His eyes adjust, skin prickling. The child is not Yesung. Slighter, smaller, but too big to be Ryeowook.

He must be dreaming. Slowly, Kangin sinks his eyes shut and rolls over onto his back, concentrating on his breaths. He finds that he doesn’t want to open his eyes and they’re squeezed too tight, but Kangin refuses to think he’s afraid. He’s not. He’s just seeing things, half-awake, off kilter because of Leeteuk’s absence, and he almost convinces himself of it. Almost drops back off to sleep. But then, from out in the hallway, shouting.

Kangin shoots bolt upright in bed. He forgets about the figure, leaping out of the bed and into the hallway just in time to see Leeteuk running in from the other end, flipping the lights on. The door to the room Sungmin and Kibum are sharing slides open in a rough movement and Kibum stumbles out, eyes like saucers.

“What’s wrong,” Kangin demands, catching him around the shoulders. He’s shaking.

“I saw it,” he says in an awed, hushed voice. Leeteuk pushes past them and Kangin glaces up into the room, sees Sungmin turn to face Leeteuk, pale and tripping over his own feet. “It was there. Just like Shindong said. I saw it.”

“What did you see?”

Sungmin answers, voice shaky but confident. “There was someone in the room. Kibum had a bad dream, I turned the lights on and.” He swallows. “It was awful. He didn’t look human. I can’t –“ He cuts himself off with a shake of the head.

Kangin edges into the room and does a quick visual sweep: empty, save for the bunk beds and the bare dresser piled with blankets.

“You get it now?”

Kangin turns around to see Shindong in the hall. His voice isn’t mean, just loud, confident with validation. Kibum hugs him.

“It was in the room with you again,” Leeteuk says, voice hard. “Did it say anything this time?”

“No.” Sungmin was gaining control of himself with every passing second, shoulders squared. “It was angry, though, I think. It was hard to tell. It was like – like a fake. Like it was trying to be human and doing a real bad job of it.”

“Want me to tell them?” Kibum is saying. “Shindong, you have to say it. I can say it if you don’t want to.”

Leeteuk goes over to rub his hand on Shindong’s back encouragingly. “What do you need to tell us? If it’s important, we need to know.”

Shindong shakes his head, but still speaks up in a voice much smaller than before. “That night, when it was in my room, it said, ‘She belongs to me. And so will your –‘” He looks at Kibum, seemingly for affirmation, because Kibum gives him a slight nod and he continues. “’And so will your abomination of a family.’”

There’s nothing to be said for a long moment. They stand quiet in the hall, staring at Shindong, and later Kangin will find time to be angry. But for now, Yesung  pushes his way into the room and tugs on Leeteuk’s sleeve.

He says, once he has Leeteuk’s attention, “Ryeowookie is not in our room.”

With a jolt, Kangin realizes that he hasn’t seen Ryeowook at all. He’s been too shocked to even think to check on him. Guilt curdles his stomach for a second, but Leeteuk stalks out of the room and there’s no choice but to follow him.

“Spread out,” he orders, “let’s find him.”

“He was probably scared and hid,” Kangin suggests, but Leeteuk’s eyes are hard and then he’s not so sure. They all fan out, checking the guest rooms and all the places they like to play games. The search barely lasts a few minutes before Shindong shouts, “He’s here! I found him!” from the main wing.

By the time Kangin reaches Ryeowook’s real bedroom in the main wing, Leeteuk is already there, crouched in front of the bed with a startled Ryeowook in his arms.

“He was asleep,” says Sungmin from behind them, who had evidently been searching the rooms on the other side of the hall when Shindong found Ryeowook in the other room. “He slept through the whole thing,” Sungmin laughs, breathless.

Leeteuk lifts Ryeowook into his arms when he stands. Five years old is much too big to carry and Ryeowook looks so big, playing with Kangin’s memory – hadn’t he just been a baby? Was that so long ago?

“We can’t let this go on,” Leeteuk says to Kangin, voice quiet. He looks like himself again, which eases some of the tension in Kangin’s chest. “We have to do something.”

Sungmin comes over, setting a hand on Leeteuk’s arm. “I have an idea.”

 

-

 

Donghae drops his suitcase unceremoniously onto the floor and bounces onto the bed, dislodging pillows and snagging both of the little chocolates that roomservice had laid there. Hyukjae rolls his eyes, kicking Donghae’s suitcase out of the little hallway and leaning his own against the wall.

“Hotels are the best,” Donghae declares, ignoring it when Hyukjae wrinkles his nose in disagreement. They’ve had this argument before. It always ends with Hyukjae’s protests about hotel beds being filthy, then being silenced by Donghae’s reminder that  _they_  are the kind of people who dirty up the sheets in the first place.

Pulling out his phone, Hyukjae frowns at the blank screen. “Hey, did Kyuhyun call you?” he asks, but by the time Donghae has wrestled his phone out of his jeans, Hyukjae has already scrolled to Kyu’s contact listing and pressed  _call._  It picks up on the second ring.

“Seriously, give a guy enough time to check into his hotel room, why don’t you?” Kyuhyun says by way of greeting.

“If you weren’t late so often I wouldn’t have to worry.”

“I am never late.”

“You’re always-“

“Okay! But I’m purposefully late. It’s a choice.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yes. You going to meet me there for the set-up?”

Hyukjae hums, looking around the room for the clock. “Yeah, we’ll meet you. Kyuhyun, thanks again.”

“Mmhm,” Kyuhyun returns in a tolerant tone. Hyukjae swears up and down that they’ll pay him back for all the work he does for them one day, but if they paid him by the case, they’d never be able to afford any equipment. “Don’t be late, I’m not hauling that stuff out of the van by myself,” he says, and then hangs up before Hyukjae can manage anything more than vague squawks of indignation.

Donghae is sitting quietly now in the center of the bed, his own phone still in hand. “I checked in with Byunghun, everything’s fine,” he says. There’s a nervous sting to the air, at odds with the brightness of the walls and the fluffy white duvet that Donghae is sitting on, summer air breezing in through the window. Their presentations go relatively smoothly nowadays; the general turnout is more populated with people interested in the paranormal than it is with skeptics. They don’t go around announcing their relationship, but it’s not a secret, either. It’s publicized enough that most of anyone who’d be bothered by it just steers clear of them in the first place.

They’re still on guard, though. The benefits of spreading awareness and information outweighs any harassment they might come across. Always has.

Hyukjae looks at the clock pointedly even though he just checked it a minute ago, smirking at Donghae. “We’ve got two hours,” he says, flopping across the end of the bed.

“Oh, do we,” Donghae says coyly. He stretches out parallel to Hyukjae.

“Yep. No deadlines, no baby monitor, nobody about to walk through the door at any minute…”

Donghae smiles and sets his hand over Hyukjae’s hipbone, fingers skimming under the hem of his t-shirt. “I love hotel rooms,” he repeats, voice pitched low, then kisses Hyukjae’s answering grin.

“That’s cheating,” Hyukjae mutters, but gives up the issue in favor of kissing Donghae some more. It’s not as if they don’t still make time for this, but something about being truly unburdened and unhurried makes it easier to just stop thinking about anything other than the slow give and take of the kiss; of Donghae’s hand moving further under his shirt, palm sweeping warmly against Hyukjae’s side. He sets his own hand against Donghae’s cheek to steady the kiss, thumb brushing his cheekbone. It gives him enough leverage to scoot closer, to tilt Donghae’s head back so he can kiss him open-mouthed, familiar but careful. There’s no rush. Donghae sets the tip of his tongue just under Hyukjae’s upper lip, sucking it gently into his mouth in a lazy way that sends warmth traveling up Hyukjae’s spine. Donghae’s hand soothes it away, moving up the back of his shirt until his fingertips are brushing at shoulderblades.

Donghae releases the kiss only long enough to repeat it with his lower lip and Hyukjae’s chest tightens; he pulls back for breath. Donghae’s eyes are smug and lazy when they open to look at him. Hyukjae smiles with one side of his mouth, glad at how swollen it is from just a few minutes of kissing. He props himself up with the elbow previously trapped against the bed, using his leverage to push at Donghae’s shoulder and roll him entirely onto his back.

“So?” Hyukjae teases, “What d’you want?”

Donghae pretends to think about it, twisting his face up dramatically until he looks all of five years old – or he would, if not for the lecherous grin he follows it up with, right before hitching a leg over Hyukjae’s hip and reversing their position. Hyukjae just laughs and draws Donghae’s head down to his, picking up where the last kiss left off. Donghae’s familiar weight settles over him, and the breeze sends a shiver through his body has very little to do with the cold.

-

 

They don’t show up late, exactly. They just arrive a few minutes  _after_  Kyuhyun, who lords it over them during set-up, people filtering into the lecture hall as seats begin to fill. It doesn’t take long. Kyuhyun spends most of the time hooking up the laptop to the projector while Donghae and Hyukjae carry in some of their equipment, placing cameras and sensors on a folding table set up on the stage. They test the projector screen to make sure the computer is working the way it should, and then Kyuhyun opens on a title slide.  _Paranormal Investigation_ , it says, simply.

Hyukjae leans against the front of the lecture podium and glances sideways at Donghae. He nods.

“Well,” Hyukjae starts, “we’ve got a pretty full room, so let’s get started. My name is Lee Hyukjae, I’m a paranormal investigator and researcher.” He turns to Donghae, who smiles at him, then at the audience.

“I’m Lee Donghae.” He gives a little bow. “I experience varying degrees of clairvoyance.”

“He’s psychic,” Hyukjae puts in, grinning and waving his fingers in Donghae’s direction. Donghae kicks him in the shin.

“You could say that,” he concedes when the light chuckles have died down. “Definitions can be confusing. I have a high degree of clairsentience, which basically means I can sense the paranormal, and I can see auras easily. In some cases I can hear and feel spirits, but usually that can only happen if a spirit is – to put it simply – broadcasting.”

“Can you read my fortune?” someone calls out from near the front of the audience, snickering.  Hyukjae stands casually upright from his lean and looks at Donghae, who’s frowning at the man.

“If you’re talking about seeing the future, no. I could read your aura, but that doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know about how you’re feeling. Sometimes I…” he looks distant for a moment, trying to find the words. Hyukjae wouldn’t have given this guy this nice of an answer, but Donghae is… Donghae.

“Sometimes I can sense things… experiences, from living people rather than spirits. But only in rare situations, and I can’t control when or if it happens.”

“But the short answer is no,” Hyukjae interjects. “If anyone else has questions, we’ll have time dedicated to answering them. I’m going to go through some basic equipment, definitions, and types of haunts, and then you can ask anything you want.

“Donghae’s extrasensory perception is a helpful starting point in a case, but the aim of our investigations is to collect evidence. Honestly, we debunk more of our cases then turn out to be true.”

He turns to the laptop where it’s set up on the podium and switches to the next slide, which lists some of the equipment they use. Kyuhyun trots in from the side of the stage and hands Hyukjae a small remote so he doesn’t have to keep using the computer to change the slides, and then goes back to where he was standing.

“Okay, this one’s probably the most popular,” Hyukjae says. He picks up a recording device from the table and holds it up. “EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon. Basically, the recorder catches sounds that we can’t hear, but that spirits might be trying to communicate. You can catch EVPs with any recording device as long as the microphone is sensitive enough. Handheld recorders like this one are ideal. Sometimes we use more sensitive external mics hooked up to a computer, usually in an area where we’ve already caught EVPs. EVPs are common, but they’re not a very good source of evidence. Background noise, radio waves, animal interference; basically there’s a lot of contamination.”

“He uses me instead,” Donghae cuts in, tapping the side of his head and earning a few more polite chuckles.

“Well, yeah. Donghae is just as reliable as this thing.” Hyukjae waves the little recorder in the air. “But his senses are not measurable proof. Photographic proof gets a better reputation, but to be honest, those just as easy to contaminate as EVPs, and harder to catch in the first place. Most photos are taken in the dark, which means shadows and reflections are easy to confuse with an actual spirit. Photos taken during the daylight are usually too bright to catch anything.”

“What about all those pictures full of dust that people say are orbs?” says the man from earlier.

Hyukjae forces a smile that he hopes is polite. “Can you save your questions, please?”

But Donghae speaks almost on top of him, too lost in his head to notice the rudeness. “Most of those photos really are of dust or bugs, we think. Orbs, as people call them, are probably just concentrated energy. Spirits don’t actually admit or give off light – that’s why they’re most often described as being either shadows or transparent. It’s important to remember that they’re not occupying space, they’re just echoes. It takes a lot of energy to manifest, and what we’re seeing are disturbances in that energy. Orbs take a lot less energy than full manifestations, and they usually mean that there’s concentrated activity in the area. Lesser spirits sharing energy, using each other to amplify. They’re generally too weak for a camera to pick up. So yes, you’re right to be suspicious of those photos.”

Hyukjae is already circling around to the table to pick up an IR camera and an EMF detector. He can’t really decide if this lecture is going well or not – he’s distracted by the obvious skeptic who keeps interrupting them, but Donghae doesn’t seem disturbed. And the guy is unknowingly playing right into their hands, anyway.

“Since Donghae is talking about energy,” he says, holding up the EMF detector in one hand and setting the IR camera on top of the podium. “This is a good way to figure out if we’re dealing with paranormal energy or normal, residual energy from the atmosphere. It’s an electromagnetic force detector, which is exactly what it sounds like. It senses and measures the natural electromagnetically charged particles around us, and the ones given off by electricity. It’s one of the reasons we turn off all the lights and anything using electricity before we investigate – we need to get a base EMF reading before we can tell if there are any spikes in energy.”

He turns the little device on and lets it run for a second. “Okay, you can’t see it from your seats but this is reading point six milligauss, which is a science-y unit of measuring magnetic density. This is a normal reading, considering the computer and projector set up in here, and all the energy powering this building. It means it’s not haunted. Is it, Donghae?”

Donghae shakes his head at him, grinning. “Not necessarily, it could just mean that no spirits are present right now. But yeah, no, this university is not haunted.” Hyukjae nods once, satisfied.

“Okay. Now, when we start getting readings above 2.0, we start to get suspicious. Again, this doesn’t prove much, but some local power source would have to be generating a  _lot_  of power for this thing to get such high readings. EMF testing just narrows things down so we can tell where to focus the investigation. Usually the EMF reading spikes really high when some activity that can be seen with the naked eye is about to happen. This is the best indication we have in paranormal research that EMF readings are legitimate, and that our theories about supernatural entities manifesting energy are on the right track.”

He turns off the meter and sets it back in the table, turning to the IR camera. “Kyuhyun, can you…?” Kyuhyun trots back onto the stage and starts fiddling with the computer. He pulls up a video which starts playing silently on the projector screen.

“Some aspects of the paranormal can’t be perceived by us. Unless you’re Donghae.” He glances over where Donghae is watching the screen silently, but he gets no reaction.

When they first started doing public seminars, they considered keeping Donghae’s clairvoyance to themselves. They shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that people who believe in the paranormal are just as ready to accept that Donghae’s abilities are real – but mere belief is not what proves any of their investigations. The audience is leaning forward a bit now, more engrossed in the video playing behind him. It’s demonstrating what film looks like that’s been shot in infrared, and he guesses they’re waiting for a ghost to pop out. It’s not going to happen; the video was shot in their apartment, and it just demonstrates how IR cameras can pick up on heat signatures.

But as Hyukjae is explaining this, he notices some audience members, as they always do, glance at Donghae from time to time. They’re curious. Once, in Incheon, an audience member asked Donghae if he had been reading everyone’s aura. He’d been a little flustered at that, but a quick explanation of how he can tune out certain senses the same way anyone can close their eyes when they don’t want to see had satisfied the man. Hyukjae knows that Donghae mostly tunes him out during this part of their routine, but it does give him a sort of mysterious air, which plays right into the audience’s perception of him.

“So,” Hyukjae continues once the video has stopped, “infrared or thermal cameras work outside of the spectrum of visible light. That doesn’t mean it’s ghost-vision, though. Ghosts, spirits, entities, however you want to refer to them, aren’t always using their energies in visible ways. Most aren’t aware they’re doing anything, and some are using too much energy of one form to be detectable on the other.”

He picks up the remote and flips to a new slide. “Okay, let’s talk about different kinds of entities for a bit and then we’ll open to questions.

“There are two main types of hauntings – residual haunts and intelligent haunts. Residual haunts are the most common, the easiest to catch, and the least treatable. The spirits behind a residual haunt are repeating the same actions or sounds, always at the same interval of time, like an echo. To put it dramatically, they don’t know they’re dead. One of our first cases was in the home of an older woman who claimed that she’d lived there for 20 years, and every morning at 7 a.m., an apparition moved across the floor and exited the house from the front wall.”

“The apparition didn’t have any signatures.” Donghae cuts in. “I couldn’t read anything from her, and neither I nor any of the equipment could interact with her at all.”

“To be fair, we didn’t have much equipment back then. We’ll get to that in a second,” Hyukjae grins. “After some research, we learned that the woman’s house had been expanded before she bought it. The front room, and the front door, had been added to it. The old door –” he flips to a scan of an old building plan – “had been about ten feet to the left. Right where this apparition appeared every morning.”

“The spirit didn’t know anything had changed. She just kept going out the front of her house, like she probably used to do every morning when she was alive. Hyukjae couldn’t see her – I could, and the homeowner could, but that’s because the homeowner was attuned to the same energy after living in the house for so long.”

“In any case, we took advantage of it. Since no outside influence affected the spirit, and we knew exactly where and when the apparition would occur, we got this.” Hyukjae flips to the next slide.

It shows a photo of a room with white sheets draped over the walls and a pale, shadowy transparency in the shape of a person. He smiles at it, remembering that day – remembering when the digital camera had shown the preview of this photo and its clear, unmistakable  _full apparition_ ; how Donghae had practically tackled him in excitement when he saw it, causing Hyukjae to fumble the camera and almost drop it.

“We got lucky,” he says, still grinning at the memory. “Full body apparitions are rare. Like I mentioned earlier, we didn’t have any of this fancy equipment back then. We had a digital camera with a bad video feature and a built-in microphone and that was pretty much the best we had to work with. We draped sheets over the walls to try and eliminate any shadows contaminating the photo. Taking the shot during daylight hours couldn’t be helped, and the morning light was kind of bright and annoying. We made a reflector with tin foil and did some test shots.”

He flips to the next slide, the same room but this time a younger Donghae standing in the frame instead of the apparition, throwing a v-sign at Hyukjae behind the camera. He casts no shadow. Hyukjae gives the audience some time to look and then clicks the remote again, switching back to the photo of the apparition. This time, the shape is easier to see. “This is the first image, but digitally altered to give it more contrast.”

There are a few murmurs from the audience. It’s possible that they’ve seen this photo before; it pops up on Naver searches. Hyukjae can’t help but feel proud. He has a lot of fondness for this photo. He wouldn’t say it was the most life-changing event of his life – that would be meeting Donghae – but it was a turning point for their investigative career.

“Okay,” he says, shaking himself out of it. From his peripheral vision he sees Donghae turn his face away from the screen as well, settling back into his visual scan of the audience. “The second type are intelligent haunts. These spirits interact with and react to the physical world. However, that doesn’t mean they’re always aware of their state. Often, they exert their energy as a force in our world - messing with electronics, making sounds, and even manifesting without realizing that they’re doing so. Sometimes they interact willingly. This is when we get a lot of our EVPs or other physical evidence. We can ask the spirits to interact. Now, that doesn’t mean we sit down and have a chat.” 

He gets some polite chuckles. The skeptic up front huffs, shifting in his seat and barely containing an eye roll.

“Even with evidence, we find that a lot of homes and businesses choose to just… let the spirits be. They’re nothing to be afraid of. But I do want to touch on malevolent haunts, because it’s important to know what you’re dealing with.

“First of all, let me tell you that people are rarely injured by malevolent spirits. That’s not because they aren’t dangerous. It’s just that the kind that can hurt you are rare. Yes, the spirits of the dead can be and often are angry, which is what keeps them here. But just like their less harmless counterparts, they need a lot of energy to manifest and a lot more to interact with physical objects. They can’t hurt you directly unless they have power or take power from us. That’s the most common type of harm – using human energy, draining us, targeting us. You can’t really protect yourself from that any more than you can prevent a place from being haunted in the first place, but it’s only a temporary danger. They feed off negative energy, so usually all it takes is a strong heart to render them harmless.”

“That’s very important,” Donghae cuts in, nodding. “Positive energy keeps negative entities at bay, but fear invites them. Any kind of fear, really – fear for your safety, fear for your loved ones. Humans are strong, but they can also be weak and vulnerable.”

Hyukjae wonders if he should elaborate on that, noticing the uncomfortable looks on some of the faces in the crowd. Donghae can be vague. Sometimes he forgets that others can’t see and feel energies the way he does, a tangible and intrinsic part of the world. But they want people to be cautious. He clicks the projector to a new slide.

NON-HUMAN ENTITIES, it says, and below that,  _Elemental, Spiritual/Mythological, Demonic._

“Like I mentioned before, malevolent spirits, often non-human, are rare. There are many, but the good news is that positive energy will keep you from having to deal with them. Unless they can harness negative emotions, they’re mostly powerless.”

As quickly as he can, Hyukjae explains elemental spirits, like poltergeist, and the spiritual beings that are normally the catalyst for myths and legend -  _la llorona_ , the white women from Central- and South-American myth; Scottish  _each-uisge_ , the malevolent water-horse; the more well-known  _kumiho_  and  _kitsune_  fox-spirits. He’s aware that he loses a lot of his audience here. Even those who believe in spiritual entities rarely believe that they can manifest in physical form, or that they still exist, even if they did in ancient times. Even Donghae fidgets. It’s not as if they don’t exist, he has told Hyukjae in the past. It’s that people don’t believe in them anymore. That’s the only difference between elemental spirits and the next category, though, so he moves on.

“Here’s where we’d like you to pay attention,” he says, earning some embarrassed mutters. Hyukjae just grins, clicking to the next slide – DEMONIC POSESSION.

Hyukjae actually hears the skeptic’s groan from the front row, but he ignores it entirely. Under the slide heading are three words: 1) Infestation, 2) Oppression, 3) Possession.

“Demonic haunts could technically belong with the spiritual, but we like to put them in their own category because they’re more frequent and we know more about them. The reason for this is belief, because belief is power. Especially for the supernatural. Demonic haunts are the most common malevolent haunts to make it beyond the infestation stage.”

“We don’t like it when they get past infestation,” Donghae pipes up. Hyukjae shakes his head in agreement.

“There are a couple of things that attract infestations. Sometimes it’s people dabbling with the occult, but more often than not, infestations are already present in our cases, and have been for some time. They’re not often seen in physical manifestation, but they can be felt. Donghae, tell them what it feels like.”

Donghae visibly thinks for a moment, chewing on the side of his lip. “It feels like… a heaviness. Like a shadow over the world. It weighs you down, keeps you on edge. You start believing in bumps in the night.”

“And then the bumps in the night become real. Oppression. This stage is when the demon begins to feed off negative energy and uses it to affect the physical world. It’s hard to tell them apart from a malevolent, once-human spirit, which is why it’s important to contact someone like us if you think you’re dealing with either. Don’t mess with the paranormal – it’s not good to take things into your own hands. In a demonic case, blessings and prayers and exorcising the home is only effective in the infestation stage, which is why it’s so important to catch it early. Once it moves on to oppression, the demon has already found a target, and it’s going to pursue. The final stage is the actual possession, and that’s dangerous. It’s not really like how you see it in movies. A possessed person usually acts normal as the demon bides its time. Demons don’t always have an agenda, but once a person is possessed, only an exorcism can help them. If they’re lucky.”

A hush has fallen over the auditorium. Hyukjae uses this to his advantage. “If you suspect that something is in your home, contact us. Most of our cases turn out to not be preternatural at all, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. That’s why we do this. Please, spread this information. Most supernatural beings are not going to harm you, but there’s no shame in fear. Let us help you.”

He exchanges a glance with Donghae, who nods. Hyukjae drums his fingers on the table briefly. “Now – any questions?”

Hyukjae answers a couple of the usual questions – how many cases have they investigated, how often do they catch anything, how do they get rid of spirits. Donghae is distracted through the first few, squinting at one of the back rows, but Hyukjae doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He probably  _couldn’t_ see what Donghae is seeing even if he knew where to look. Then a woman raises her hand and asks, “Have either of you ever been hurt on a case?” and Hyukjae freezes up.

_Have you ever been hurt?_  He opens his mouth to speak, but the only thing he can think of is Donghae; the only image he can conjure is the smudge of dark hair under a pile of white linens, unresponsive for days, and he can’t tell them about that. But the Donghae of the present moves past him on the stage now, bouncing a bit as he goes to the computer and opens the file of case photos.

“Well, we don’t want to mislead you, it’s rare that people are physically injured. But sometimes – here.”

Hyukjae twists around to look at the projector screen and smiles to himself despite the subject matter. It’s a close shot of a boy holding up the side of his shirt to display two scratch marks along his ribcage, pressing a 100-won coin beside them to show scale. The photo doesn’t show his face, but Hyukjae knows the boy is his old university roommate, Hangeng. It’s from his and Donghae’s first investigation, the one that fell into their laps when they had no idea what they were doing. He can still remember the way Donghae’s hands had been shaking after this incident – he’d never come across such negative energy.

“This another of our first investigations,” Donghae is saying. He picks up the remote where Hyukjae had left it on the edge of the podium and switches the screen to show another photo. This one isn’t quite as closely shot; Hangeng’s face is visible and Hyukjae is partially in view, holding up Hangeng’s shirt for him because his arm had been too weak at that point. The scratch marks are an angry red now, split open and infected. “This picture was taken a day after the scratches showed up. Nothing we did to treat it helped, it just kept getting worse. It wasn’t until we got rid of the malevolent entity that caused them that the cuts began to heal. They did heal up completely, and he’s no worse for wear, and it’s the worst physical injury that’s happened to any of our clients.” On his way back to his previous spot on stage, Donghae surreptitiously presses his hand into the small of Hyukjae’s back.

He takes in a deep breath and asks for more questions.

The man he chooses asks, “Is it easier to use digital images and video rather than film to catch evidence?”

“Good question. I have no idea. Kyuhyun does, though. Kyu?”

Off the side of the stage Kyuhyun is shaking his head frantically, waving his hands and mouthing  _no_  repeatedly. Donghae walks over and grabs one of his flailing arms, laughing as he pulls him on stage.

Kyuhyun shuffles to stand in front of the table awkwardly. “Um,” he starts, and then throws a glare in Hyukjae’s direction and squares his shoulders. “Well, digital imagery is easier to fake –er, manipulate -  but film has a lot of flaws, too. Dust, bad exposure; grainy, low-quality photos can make you see things that aren’t there or make it harder to see the things that are. Digital photography can have the same problems if you don’t know what you’re doing. I still say digital is better to use, though.”

There’s a moment of silence in which everyone looks at him, waiting for more. Hyukjae clears his throat. “Why?”

“Oh, um. If we’re talking about spirits using energy, then I think digital photography lends itself to that pretty well. Light is energy. Photographs are imprints of light in different colors and lengths. Film captures light in several chemical processes, but digital photography stores light information in an electrical charge. It more accurately captures the energy sprits exert on the world in order to manifest. Digital imagery can also separate light information, such as brightness, into separate tones, like an organized list of all the shifts in light and how we perceive it. Digital cameras are almost as sensitive as the human eye, so they can catch much more than a film camera ever could.”

Hyukjae blinks at him, catching Donghae’s eye over his head. Donghae shrugs. They trust Kyuhyun to know what he’s doing with their equipment, but maybe they should start using his information to their advantage.

“Thanks, Kyuhyun,” Hyukjae says, and Kyuhyun shuffles gratefully off stage. “We do still bring analog equipment to our investigations. The downside of digital technology is that spirits can draw energy right out of it. Good for them, bad for us, because then we don’t have anything to use to capture evidence. So a film camera is always close by just in case.”

“Luckily Hyukjae and I don’t usually need to draw spirits out with large amounts of energy,” Donghae adds. “They’re likely to show just because we’re there. And anyway, we’re more concerned with learning what spirits are there and why; getting evidence isn’t for us or for our clients. It’s for everyone else’s benefit. Your benefit.”

The skeptical man from earlier has the decency to raise his hand this time, but only an instant before he speaks without being called on. “How do you explain the fact that there’s more activity when  _you_  guys are there, then? I mean, doesn’t this stuff happen at random? Why does it all suddenly happen when you show up?”

This kind of question is asked a lot, but it always sets Hyukjae’s teeth on edge. Donghae handles it with ease and a smile every time.

“Well, first of all, it doesn’t always happen at random. Hyukjae talked about this already - when activity happens on a regular basis, we call it a residual haunt. They happen whether anybody is there or not. But that’s not the question you’re asking,” Donghae says.

“There are ways to draw the spirits out. Because most of them aren’t harmful, we try to learn something about their identities first. For example, many, many of the spirits we do encounter were soldiers or civilians killed during war. When the war is mentioned aloud, then, well. That interests them. Other spirits are not so friendly – they’re the kind who were never human. In that case, we place spiritual relics around the home to draw them out.”

“It really pisses ‘em off,” Hyukjae interjects, and Donghae nods while audience members laugh.

Donghae looks at the remote in his hand, turning it over and over as the chuckling dies off. “When I’m in the house,” he says when it’s once again silent, “it makes it easier.”

“For the spirits,” Hyukjae clarifies, watching the side of Donghae’s downturned face. Donghae nods.

“For the spirits. Think of it like tuning a radio: when the signal’s just a little bit off, you get static. You can still hear the station coming in but it’s fuzzy. Hard to understand. So you turn the dial a bit until it comes in clearer. That’s me. I’m easier to connect with. The spirits think they’re experiencing the world the same way they did in life; they expect everything to make sense like it used to, but it doesn’t. It’s confusing. But if they interact with me it’s kind of like… imagine visiting a foreign country, lost and confused, and then meeting someone there who speaks your language. They’re drawn to me and then they find they can communicate, and they use it to their advantage.”

The skeptic folds his arms across his chest and leans back in his seat, but he says nothing. They get a few more questions directed at Donghae and Hyukjae divides his attention between watching the skeptic out of the corner of his eye and watching the time. Eventually they have to wrap it up, and it’s an unexpected relief to watch everyone file out of the auditorium.

They thank the university’s events coordinator while Kyuhyun disconnects the laptop and brings equipment back to the van. There are a few people still milling about the building when they step back into the warm day. Hyukjae toys with the idea of just driving back home, but they’ve already paid for the hotel room and it just seems like a waste.

He’s pulling out his car keys, Donghae wondering aloud about what kind of food they should eat tonight, but his voice trails off just as Hyukjae has gotten the door unlocked. He looks over the hood of the car to see Donghae turned away from it, watching as Kyuhyun approaches, accompanied by another man. Hyukjae circles in front of the car to meet them.

“He asked to talk to you about something important,” Kyuhyun says.

The man looks exhausted, but his cheek dimples when he smiles and bows politely, introducing himself as Park Jungsoo, “but please call me Leeteuk.” He says fervently, a note of desperation in his tone. Hyukjae can tell where this is going already, and he meets Kyuhyun’s eyes, raising his brows. Kyuhyun knows they’re not here for investigations, but he only shrugs in response and turns to walk back to the van, footsteps scuffing on the blacktop as he goes.

“I really liked your presentation,” Leeteuk is saying, “but I have a few questions that I couldn’t ask in front of the audience. I’m really – really glad we found you.”

Hyukjae does’t miss the plural, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else around them.

“So am I,” Donghae says, smiling encouragingly, and both men look at him. “How can we help?”

It all comes out in a rush then. “We just moved into a new house and there have been some… some things happening. I’m sorry to stop you when you were about to leave but I don’t see any other options right now. My family needs your help.”

“Leeteuk-ssi, I apologize, but we’re only in town for the weekend. I could get you some referrals for investigators who live in the area.”

“No, please. It has to be you.”

Hyukjae gives a placating smile. “Often, things aren’t as bad as they seem. It’s most likely to be old plumbing or high concentrations of EMF, sometimes just a small nuisance like uneven flooring can –”

“You don’t understand,” Leeteuk interjects, shaking his head. “It’s not that, I know it isn’t. The things we’ve seen are scaring my family, and I can’t even get a priest to bless the house. My family is a bit unconventional.”

“Family?” Donghae echoes.

“Yes. Five children, myself, and my boyfriend.” He’s looking between the two of them nervously now.

He doesn’t need to be nervous. Even aside from the fact that Hyukjae and Donghae really could be one of few investigative teams who would be willing to help, Hyukjae knows that they’re going to give in the moment he says the word  _children_.

“We’ll help, of course we’ll help,” Donghae says earnestly. The relief in Leeteuk’s expression is tangible. “Do you live nearby, or… ?”

“Not too far, about a half hour drive.”

“We’ll follow you.” Hyukjae twirls the keys in his hand and Leeteuk breaks into a smile, nearly tripping over himself as he bows and thanks them.

Hyukjae drops into the drivers’ seat of the car and Donghae slides in the other side. Hyukjae looks at him for a moment, key in the ignition, poised to turn.  “Are you sure you can –” he starts, but Donghae interrupts him.

“We can just look. It could be nothing. If there is something in the house, we can come back in a few days to investigate. Okay?”

Hyukjae watches through the windshield as Leeteuk makes his way across the lot, heading to a van parked close to the building. He must have been one of the first people here.

“Is he as bad as he looks?”

In his peripheral vision, Donghae nods. “I saw him when we were on stage, I think. Whatever’s on his mind doesn’t leave it for a second."

“Okay. The least we can do is give it a look.” Hyukjae starts the car. 


	4. Chapter 4

The drive takes them out of the city streets and onto a lazy road, lifting uphill until the mountains seem like a destination instead of a backdrop. Finally, Leeteuk’s car turns onto a private lane thick with trees, the sloped roof of a hanok coming into view. The tires of their cars kick dust into the dry air as the pavement gives way to crushed gravel.

“Woah.” Hyukjae slides the gear shift into park and Donghae ducks his head to get a good view from behind the windshield. “Is this the right place?”

Ahead of them, Leeteuk steps out of his car. Before either of them even unbuckle themselves, the heavy wooden door opens in front of the house and a man comes down the step. He says something to Leeteuk that Hyukjae can’t make out.

“Looks like it,” Donghae replies. The hanok seems to be the reason the drive had sent them to the mountains: it looks older in parts, but the houses are linked together with obvious remodeling. An older home, especially a drafty one like this, means they’re probably looking at a family whose children have active imaginations and have heard one-too-many ghost story at school. Hyukjae thinks this will be an easy one to explain.

Donghae gets out of the car, startling him. When Hyukjae climbs out and shuts the drivers’ side door, he sees Donghae standing at his still open door, squinting at the home with a frown.

Hyukjae can admit when he’s too quick to judge, at least. “Donghae?”

Before he can respond Leeteuk is heading over to them with the other man in tow. “Lee Donghae-ssi, Lee Hyukjae-ssi, this is Kim Youngwoon,” he introduces with his dimpled smile, looking less anxious then he had at the university. They exchange polite bows.

“You can call me Kangin. The kids do.” When he smiles, Kangin’s eyes crinkle up good-naturedly.

Donghae snaps out of his distraction at this, smiling in return. It’s his business smile, mouth a flat line but the sincerity in the shape of his eyes makes up for it. “Well-met. Leeteuk said something’s frightening your kids?”

“Not just the kids,” Kangin admits. “You can come inside, if you want to do – uh. Whatever it is… you do.”

Hyukjae laughs, bounding ahead – probably impolitely, but he wants to get this show on the road. “You’ll see. Or hopefully you won’t see, if we don’t find anything. That would be best, right?” He grins back at them, but the answering smile on Leeteuk’s face isn’t the dimpled kind and Kangin still looks dubious. Donghae is following behind, distracted again.

Hyukjae  _is_  polite enough to wait and let the couple invite them into their home first. He nudges his shoulder against Donghae’s while Leeteuk’s friendly voice calls out to the children for “meeting time, quickly!” and raises his eyebrows when Donghae looks over:  _everything ok?_  Donghae just smiles flatly with his eyebrows lifted:  _not sure yet._

Two children come into the entryway and bow politely. One of them is tiny, probably only a couple of years older than Ara, his bow timid but careful. Hyukjae glances over to see Donghae’s reaction – no doubt he’ll be going on about how cute the kid is on the drive home – but he’s just in time to catch a worried expression on Donghae’s face before he schools it into a warm smile.

Another child comes in behind the two. And from the other direction, two more. The size of the house makes a little more sense now.

The oldest probably can’t be considered a kid, he looks like he’s at least old enough to be in high school. He gathers the other four into order and, with a muttered countdown, makes them all bow and chorus a “hello!”

“My name is Sungmin,” the oldest says, “and these are Shindong, Yesung, Kibum, and the youngest there is Ryeowook.”

“These are Hyukjae-ssi and Donghae-ssi, and they’re our guests,” Leeteuk cuts in pointedly.

“Are you here to kill the ghosts?” says Shindong. Kangin palms his forehead.

Hyukjae laughs. “We don’t know if there are any ghosts, but if there are, we’ll do our best, okay?”

“You can’t kill ghosts, they’re already dead,” Yesung puts in, and then furrows his brow. “Can you?”

“Not ghosts,” says Donghae, and Hyukjae almost startles – he’d been so quiet since they drove up. Donghae turns to Leeteuk and Kangin, business-like again. “Can you show us what you’ve been experiencing?”

“Show you?”

“We like to get a feel of the house,” Hyukjae clarifies. “And to try and figure out what’s causing the disturbances if it’s not paranormal.”

The children shuffle their feet. “Guys, can you play outside for a bit?” asks Leeteuk. Yesung tears out of the house almost instantly, tugging the youngest behind him. Shindong looks uncertain but follows suit, and the one who hasn’t spoken yet, Kibum, goes without complaint.

“Can you watch them?” Leeteuk asks Sungmin. He opens his mouth to reply, glancing between Hyukjae and Donghae, but closes it without saying anything and follows the others.

“They’re amazing,” Donghae remarks once it’s just the four of them in the house. Kangin nods proudly.

The room they’re in is long and unfurnished save for a desk along the back wall. Hyukjae gestures to it, some things beginning to make a little more sense. “So this is a guesthouse?”

“It was supposed to be,” Leeteuk says. “We’d like to try and get it operating one day when the kids are older, but no, we didn’t buy this to be a guesthouse. It was sold in foreclosure. They told us the previous owners spent a lot of money on permits and repairs, but they left it as-is before they started taking guests and stopped paying.”

“We figured they ran out of money,” Kangin adds.

Hyukjae taps his fingers against his thigh. Pretty soon he’s going to have to stop telling himself there’s nothing paranormal going on here, but he – he wants to take Donghae home. He sighs, resigned. “Renovations like that, when people start tearing down walls and changing things, often stir up paranormal activity. Spirits who have gotten comfortable start to get upset, and they usually let you know it.”

“When did you start noticing activity?” Donghae asks, but Hyukjae knows he means  _where_.

“Um, the first morning after we moved in?” Kangin phrases the question at Leeteuk, who nods.

“In the one of the kids’ rooms. There was a smell like something had died in the walls, but we didn’t think anything of it until we noticed it in other places of the house.”

Hyukjae’s stomach drops. He looks at Donghae, who doesn’t seem surprised to hear it. “Can you show us?”

The house is set up with a large common room in the center, sparsely furnished with a couch, various cushions strewn about, and a fireplace. There’s a TV set up in there as well, cords blooming from the back and plugged into a power strip, video game controllers piled on top.

“We slept in here for what, a week?” Kangin remarks.

“All of you?”

“Yeah. Felt safer to be all together. Sorry it’s so cold. It used to just be kind of drafty in here, but now it’s just cold all the time, even with the floors heated.”

“Heating won’t help,” Donghae remarks. “It’s not a natural kind of cold.”

They continue walking, but Leeteuk sneaks a look at Donghae over his shoulder. Hyukjae looks too, but Donghae’s attention is elsewhere. Usually they wouldn’t say that sort of thing on a first meeting because they can’t prove that activity is unnatural just yet.

They keep following through to one of the wings leading off the north wall of the common room. Donghae is dragging his feet, though, casting his eyes around the common room again before he exits. Still, he says nothing about what he might be thinking and Hyukjae is itching to know what’s going on in his head. He isn’t usually this absent during investigations.

They turn a corner and enter a hallway lined with doors, all of them slid open to reveal rooms full of the children’s things. Despite toys and dressers and posters on the walls, none of the rooms look lived-in.

“So, this is where it started,” Leeteuk says. “First with the smell that I mentioned before –“

“No, it was the mirrors.”

They all turn to look at Kangin. “The mirrors were all broken when we woke up the morning after we moved in.”

Hyukae lifts his eyebrows. “Every mirror in this wing?”

“Every mirror in the house. I almost forgot about that.” Leeteuk’s face looks pinched and worried. “We replaced them. But Kangin had to go back to Seoul for a few days and when he was gone, we were all woken up by the banging.”

“Banging?” Donghae finally speaks up. “What kind of banging?”

“In intervals. Exactly on the hour at one, two, and three.”

“Loud banging too,” Kangin adds, “It would shake the doors. That’s why they’re all open now.”

Donghae nods, reaching out to run a hand along one of the doorframes. “Three knocks, right?”

“How did you know that?”

Hyukjae looks between the two of them and sighs, reminding himself to stay as professional as he can. Leeteuk and Kangin keep exchanging a look; Hyukjae hasn’t known either men long enough to be able to read them, but he’s done a lot of investigations. He knows that mix of relief and dread when your experiences are validated. That you’re not going crazy, but you wish you were.

“Malevolent spirits hate the divine. They like to corrupt anything that’s holy. Three repetitions – the trinity – for three hours. It’s mocking God.”

There is a silence. Leeteuk passes a hand over his face, visibly composing himself, but his voice still comes out smaller than normal when he says, “I think the children have seen it.”

Hyukjae winces. “Where?”

Leeteuk points just across the hall, into the room whose doorway Donghae still leans against. “Shindong and Kibum’s room. That was the first time. Shindong doesn’t like to talk about it.” He glances sideways at Kangin. Hyukjae doesn’t manage to catch Kangin’s expression before Leeteuk continues on. “I woke up that night because he was screaming, and when I tried to get into the room, the door wouldn’t open. It was like there was too much pressure on the other side. Eventually it just popped open and Shindong was crying, saying he saw someone in the room. Kibum claims he didn’t see anyone.”

“Okay.” Hyukjae rubs the back of his head, watching Donghae pace around the room in question, touching things here and there. He doesn’t speak up, so Hyukjae assumes there’s nothing out of the ordinary in there. “There’s a phenomenon called hypnagogia. It’s when we experience things in between waking and sleeping, like dreams that still linger. It can be very confusing. Anything that wakes a person up or is experienced just after waking is hard to prove as paranormal. Usually it’s just a trick of the mind. If Kibum didn’t see it, then it’s possible Shindong was only having hypnagogic episode.”

“But you said that was the first time. Have you seen the apparition again?” Donghae asks, stepping out of the room.

“Yes, but that was in the north wing. Shindong didn’t see it then, it was Sungmin and Kibum who were sharing a room. They both saw it.”

Hyukjae curses under his breath. “Can you show us that room as well?”

Kangin nods his head back the way they came, toward the common room. Donghae heads down around the corner immediately, Hyukjae following at a slower pace, turning this new information over in his mind.

He’s so busy trying to think of a way to debunk the sightings that Hyukjae almost walks straight into the back of Donghae, who has stopped in the middle of the hallway.

“Donghae, what –” Following his line of sight, Hyukjae looks at the floor, where a small… something is lying in a crumpled heap, like a cloth napkin. “– is that?” he finishes. He bends to reach for it but Donghae stops him with a hand, looking at the thing curiously.

“Oh! Sorry, that, the kids found that when we moved in, I thought I threw this away?” Leeteuk trails off, leaning over and scooping the cloth easily into his hand. Hyukjae sees Donghae make an aborted movement with a hand as if to stop him, but curls his fingers back into his palm instead and drops his arm.

Hyukjae peers down the end of the hallway. He can still hear the children’s voices, muffled and far away, out the front of the house. “Everyone’s still outside?” he asks, barely waiting for Kangin to nod before motioning toward the thing in Leeteuk’s hand and saying, “That wasn’t here when we walked in, was it? Someone would have noticed.”

There’s a long pause. Donghae clears his throat gently, extending his hand palm-upward. “May I?”

The little thing tips easily into Donghae’s waiting palm. He cards his fingers through the worn, dirty strips of cloth.

“It’s an old jegi,” Kangin explains.

Donghae nods and his fingers fumble at the tight knot in the center of the cloth. Time has tugged it together too tightly, so he finds a loose thread below the knot and tugs. The bundle rips open easily, giving way like ripened fruit, and a small, dull coin tips into his palm. “Very old,” he confirms, handing the coin to Hyukjae absently.

It’s warm. The markings are tarnished around their raised edges, but still easily readable.  _1 yang_ , it says along the side.

“Woah,” Kangin says over his shoulder, “Do you think that’s worth something?”

Hyukjae grins when Leeteuk elbows Kangin in the side. “Stop,” he chides. “I threw that away, I know I did.”

“You said the kids found it?” Donghae asks, finally looking up from his close inspection of the remaining cloth.

“Yeah, they were playing a game the day we moved in. I thought it was just junk leftover from the previous owners or something. I take it I was wrong?”

Donghae looks at Hyukjae, mouth set in a tight line. “It’s just a toy,” he tells Leeteuk, “it’s not, uh, it’s not a threat. It’s tied to positive energy. But it doesn’t make sense just yet. Can I keep this?”

Leeteuk half-shrugs, half-nods.

On the way to the north wing, they don’t pass through the common room again. Instead, they follow a hallway that runs around the perimeter of the common room, from which the other rooms of the house – which used to be separate buildings themselves – can be accessed.

There are four entrances to the common room, Hyukjae notes. Four exits to the perimeter hallway.

They pass a kitchen and what looks like a study or computer room, still partially filled with unopened boxes, presumably still packed from the move. They don’t stop in any of the rooms, save for Donghae peering through their doorways. Hyukjae hangs back to keep pace with him. He seems completely lost in his thoughts, only giving Hyukjae that polite smile of his when he nudges him with his shoulder.

The layout of the north wing is exactly like the east wing. The only difference is that the rooms down the hallway aren’t full of toys and clothes, just beds and linens, crisp like a hotel room.

“You’re not sleeping in these rooms anymore?” he ventures.

Kangin shakes his head. “No, we’re pretty much sleeping wherever we want at this point. Most of us are back our rooms.”

“I think all the kids were in Sungmin’s room when I left this morning,” Leeteuk chuckles.

“The knocking has stopped?”

“Everything pulled back a little after the other night. Since then it’s been mostly quiet, just… strange,” Kangin says.

“Strange how?”

Kangin shrugs. “Feels strange. It’s cold, it’s like everyone’s just. Waiting.”

“Was it in here?”

Three heads turn down the hallway. Donghae is standing at the doorway of one of the rooms, looking at them expectantly.

“… Yeah.” Leeteuk says. “Sungmin and Kibum were sleeping in there. It was… it was a strange night.”

“Strange how?” Hyukjae prompts softly. Leeteuk’s eyes aren’t focused, his thoughts probably back to a confusing evening that his brain has trouble processing. Most people have trouble processing this sort of thing. The brain likes logic. It doesn’t like puzzles it can’t solve.

“I woke up in the middle of the night,” Leeteuk goes on, rubbing gently at his collarbone. “I thought I heard the kids running around out of bed, playing a game and making a lot of noise. But when I went to scold them, I couldn’t find anyone. They were all in their beds. But I... heard someone. At least I thought so. Right in my ear, like a child’s voice. But the moment after I heard it, Sungmin started shouting.”

“It woke us all up,” Kangin explained. “Sungmin looked pretty shaken up, he said he saw someone in his room who didn’t look human.”

“Oh, and Shindong.” Leeteuk says this to Kangin pointedly.

“Yeah, Shindong. I guess this thing spoke to him the first time, but he was too scared to talk about it before.”

“It spoke to you?” Hyukjae meets Donghae’s raised expression. “What did it say?”

Kangin’s expression darkens immediately. “Something about an abomination of a family.”

“And, ‘She belongs to me,’” Leeteuk quotes.

Hyukjae looks at Donghae again, mouthing,  _she?_  But Donghae just shakes his head and moves forward to place a hand gently on Kangin’s back.

“Don’t worry about what it said. It was just trying to rile you up. Demons like to exploit weaknesses.”

“Demons?” Kangin echoes while Hyukjae closes his eyes, resignation dropping into his belly like a weight.

“Leeteuk-ssi, Kangin-ssi, is there a place we can all sit down? We should probably have a talk.”

 

-

They end up at the long kitchen table, Hyukjae and Donghae on one side, Leeteuk and Kangin on the other. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Hyukjae puts it on the table between them and pulls up the voice memo recorder “Can I make documentation?”

Leeteuk nods mutely. Hyukjae hits record and rattles off the date and time. “Can you guys just tell us your names and the full address of the house?”

They do, and Hyukjae smiles at them, continuing, “This is Lee Hyukjae and I’m here with Lee Donghae. We’ve been given permission to document and record by Park Jungsoo and Kim Youngwoon, is that correct?” They both say yes. “Sorry about that, it’s just for legality’s sake. Normally I would have you sign something for me before we even look at the house, but we had short notice today. I can bring a form by tomorrow if that’s okay?”

“Sure. Do you… often need legal help?” Kangin asks.

Hyukjae laughs a bit. “No, we’re just being careful. Most of the documentation is for our sake, and for… well, in case we need outside help. For now, can we have you two just summarize what you told us today?”

“Okay. Where, uh, where do you want us to start?”

“From the beginning,” Donghae says politely.

“Well,” Kangin starts, “We put in an offer for the house the day we saw it…”

They talk freely, mostly Leeteuk’s narration with Kangin adding notes here and there. Hyukjae shifts in his seat, letting his knee rest lightly against Donghae’s. He feels oddly cut off, Donghae’s mind elsewhere. Hyukjae tries to focus on the strange disconnect and his own agitation, hoping Donghae will pick up on it. Usually Donghae blocks out common emotion; it’s too messy, too loud. But after a minute, he does notice – Donghae moves a hand to curl his fingers around Hyukjae’s under the table. Just a quick, reassuring squeeze and then he lets go, but he’s back, focused now on the people in the room and the task at hand.

Leeteuk’s story leads up to the present. “Sungmin read about your presentation at the university over the internet and we had to try,” he concludes.

“Thanks. Donghae, you want to tell us what you know?”

Donghae nods, sitting up straighter. Here is where he usually reassures people that nothing is going to harm them, his expression so sincere and calming. But today, he just focuses on the two men before him and says, “There’s something dangerous in your home.”

It’s not new information at this point, but Leeteuk looks even more exhausted than Hyukjae thought was possible.

“I think you all feel it, which is why we’re here. Anything that can manifest physically and make its presence known on this scale is… it’s not easy to deal with. I’d say – “ he glances at Hyukjae’s phone where the voice memo app is counting up the minutes. He thinks for a minute, spreading his hands on the table. “Unofficially, since we don’t have evidence yet, I would like to say that you’re well into an infestation. Maybe even obsession. I saw it with your children. I saw it with you. It’s already angry that we’re here. I don’t… want to scare you, I just want you to know.”

Silence falls in which Donghae stares down at his hands. He doesn’t like to give bad news. He’s surprisingly good at hard truths.

“We’re going to do everything we can to help,” Hyukjae says quietly.

Kangin laughs humorlessly. “Thanks, because if I had to take this into my own hands I’d just be cursing at the air all day long. And you said it’s bothering our  _children_? I’m -”

“Kangin,  _don’t_.” Leeteuk sighs. “I keep trying to tell him anger is going to make things worse. I don’t want him to provoke this thing.”

 Kangin shuts his mouth, but he fidgets unhappily. Hyukjae glances at Donghae, who nods, then says, “Which is exactly what we’re going to do.”

“… What?”

Hyukjae takes a breath and folds his arms across the tabletop. “We’ll have to head home for tonight to get some equipment and see if we can dig up any information on the property, but we’d like to – if you’ll have us – do some investigating. Get some proof. Having Donghae here will go a long way towards provoking some activity. Leeteuk-ssi, you heard me talk about this earlier today, but in cases like these proof is more important than trying to satisfy any curiosity or earn credibility. We’re in a potentially dangerous situation, and if we need any help from the church, they’re going to require more than just your word.”

After some silence, Leeteuk says, “Okay. Okay?” The last he directs at Kangin, who nods.

“Whatever you have to do.”

“We can probably swing a couple hotel rooms; how long do you think –“

“You can’t leave,” Donghae cuts in. His tone is flooded with sympathy. “It won’t help. This thing is already attached to your family. I  _know_  you want to keep your sons safe, but there isn’t anywhere safe right now, please understand. Hyukjae and I are going to stop this, but we need your help, and we need to keep this contained.”

Leeteuk looks carefully into Donghae’s face, and then Hyukjae’s in turn. He says in a low voice, “How many?”

Hyukjae’s lost. “Excuse me?” he starts, but beside him Donghae says, “One. Her name is Ara. She’s three.” And Hyukjae understands.

His mind flashes on Ryeowook’s small face, how he’d immediately reminded him of their daughter. Five children, all in harm’s way. There’s no turning back.

 

-

Keying back into the hotel room is more subdued than it was the first time. Hyukjae files in after Donghae, body tired but brain buzzing.

Like before, Donghae flops onto the fluffy bed immediately, but unlike before, he just lays flat out and sighs heavily. The sheets are still mussed from this morning. Was it really only this morning?

His shoulders feel heavy. He must be picking up on Donghae’s mood – or maybe he’s just carrying some bad energy back from the house. It’s possible; Donghae says that all people are sensitive to paranormal energy in the right circumstances.  He doesn’t even want to think about how draining it must be for Leeteuk and Kangin’s family to be living in that house day in and day out.

“Ah,” Hyukjae whines, stretching his shoulders, “and I had such good plans for tonight.” This earns a laugh from Donghae, but it comes out sounding more like a groan. Hyukjae kneels on the bed and swings a leg over to straddle Donghae’s hips, leaning forward and supporting the weight of his upper body on his hands. He knocks his forehead gently against Donghae’s.

“I think I’m too exhausted tonight, Hyuk.”

“’S okay,” Hyukjae says lightly. If being in that house took its toll on him, he can’t imagine how Donghae must feel.

He shuffles down to settle his hips over Donghae’s thighs, curving his back so his head can rest on Donghae’s chest. Donghae’s hands immediately settle in his hair.

“You’re sure it’s demonic?” It’s been on both their minds and Hyukjae knows it, but someone has to say it. Donghae heaves out a long sigh.

“Yeah.”

There’s a long minute where neither of them say anything. It’s the first preternatural presence they’ve directly dealt with since the last possession three years ago. Hyukjae knows they have to get back up on the horse, and he knows what’s at stake for that family.

He’s about to ask if Donghae is going to be okay with this, despite his better judgment, but when Hyukjae lifts his head he sees that his eyes have closed. He waits. When he’s sure Donghae is asleep, Hyukjae eases off him slowly.

He lets him sleep. They have research to do, but Donghae isn’t likely to fall asleep very easily on his own afterward, so he needs every minute of rest he can get right now. Hyukjae’s research goes nowhere fast: he digs as far back as he can and only comes up with retail listings on the property. He’ll call the company in the morning and see if they have any history on it.

Donghae stirs awake after little more than half an hour. “Hey,” Hyukjae says, “go back to sleep,” but as soon as Donghae notices that he’s got his laptop open and the hotel room’s complementary notepad paper covered up with Hyukjae’s scrawl, he gets up.

“Find anything?”

“Nope. Sleep some more, I’ll catch you up later.”

Donghae ignores him and picks up the notepad. It’s pretty much gibberish and crossed-out leads, so he puts it back down and leans over Hyukjae’s shoulder to look at the webpage he’s on. It’s the personal page of the realtor that sold the property, and Hyukjae snags the notebook back to write down the number.

“It was turned into a guesthouse after this, right?” Donghae points at the photo on the screen, stamped with SOLD.

“Yeah, but I can’t find anything else about it. We’ll have to see what the realtors know, I’m going to call in the morning.”

“Okay. Let me see if I can learn why the guesthouse was sold,” Donghae says, scribbling the address down in his illegible handwriting. “How much documentation did you get?” He moves off, getting his personal laptop out of his suitcase and propping himself up against the pile of cushions at the head of the bed.

“Most of the walkthrough and the interview. Should be a couple hours of review, I really don’t want to transcribe right now.”

“Let’s make Kyuhyun do it.”

Hyukjae snickers but doesn’t object. Transcribing audio takes forever; he knows they’ll end up splitting the work between them like they always do. After pulling up the audio files and fitting headphones over his ears, he makes a crude drawing of the house’s layout based on memory and begins to fill in each room with information. Tomorrow they can go through it with Kyuhyun and decide where to set up all the equipment. He glances at Donghae every few minutes – he’s clicking around on this laptop with frustration in his expression, and once, Hyukjae sees him with his phone in hand, looking down at it curiously.

The first audio file ends and he draws his attention back to his laptop, opening the file that contains the interview they’d had in the kitchen. Something’s wrong.

At first he thinks there’s been a malfunction, or that the program settings have been messed with – the sound wavelengths on the timeline are interspersed with long breaks of flat lines, indicating silence. He starts playback. It’s his voice stating the date and time; introducing himself and Donghae, then Leeteuk and Kangin; Hyukjae explaining why they need to document. Then begins a few seconds of silence. Donghae’s voice comes next, saying,  _”From the beginning,”_  followed by Kangin telling them about buying the house. More silence.

He scans the rest of the audio file to see if it’s consistent, and it’s full of inordinately long breaks in between the wavelengths. Leeteuk’s voice is nowhere on this recording. Every time he should be speaking, there’s just a flat line of silence, without even background noise. If he didn’t know better he would assume that someone went through the entire file and just replaced everything Leeteuk said with computer-generated silences. He stops scrolling when he gets near the end of the file: there’s a spike of sound, spanning three or four times the frequency of the rest of the speech wavelengths. Had someone bumped the mic?

Scrolling back, Hyukjae finds the nearest long silence that denotes Leeteuk was probably speaking and sticks the cursor in the middle of the speech wavelength before that, so he can get some idea about what was being said prior to the spike of sound. He presses play.

_“… -ver you have to do.”_

Silence in place of Leeteuk’s reply. Then:

_“You can’t leave. It won’t help. This thing is already attached to your family. I_ know _you want to keep your sons safe, but there isn’t anywhere safe right now, please understand. Hyukjae and I are going to stop this –“_

And then Donghae’s voice is interrupted by a high-pitched squeal of static, so ear-splitting that it makes Hyukjae throw his headphones onto the table with a clatter, skin prickling with adrenaline, breathing hard. Donghae stares at him wide-eyed from across the room, the sound so loud that it can still be heard coming through the headphones’ speakers as Hyukjae mirrors his expression.

Any doubts he had about how soon this needs to be dealt with are gone.


	5. Chapter 5

The dream he has is very strange, but the details slip away like sand through his fingers the moment Donghae sits up. Strange is much better than the nightmares he was expecting last night.

The hotel room curtains are still drawn tight enough to block out sunlight, leaving the room dim with only the desk lamp on and light leaking into the little front hallway from the bathroom. It was the sound of the coffee maker that woke him up, still gurgling away. Donghae blearily crawls out of bed to pour himself a cup.

He’s sitting on the foot of the bed and squinting into his cup of astringent hotel coffee, contemplating opening the curtains, when Hyukjae pads out of the bathroom.

“Hey. I see you found the coffee.”

Donghae only hums and lowers his head to the brim, letting the steam curl over his skin and wake him up a bit.

“Okay?” Hyukjae says, and Donghae’s nod into the cup answers whichever question he was asking. The coffee’s fine, his sleep was fine. Hyukjae opens the curtains.

“Kyuhyun’s on his way over,” he says while Donghae waits for his eyes to adjust. “Hae.”

Donghae shakes himself a bit, realizing he isn’t being very responsive. He sets his cup down on the floor and smiles at Hyukjae, eyes squeezed shut, which gets him a laugh.

“I’m going to shower.”

Hyukjae nods and busies himself with pouring his own coffee.

When he steps out of the shower, Hyukjae is sitting on the bed and scrolling through his phone, their suitcases at his feet. Donghae shoves his rumpled pajamas into his suitcase, ignoring Hyukjae scrunching his nose at the untidiness.

“Kyuhyun’s ready to follow us out there. I called ahead and Leeteuk said they’re making breakfast.”

Plucking the cup of coffee from where he’d left it before his shower, Donghae settles next to Hyukjae and gulps it down. Hyukjae nudges closer until their thighs press together.

When they’d called Kyuhyun, he’d said it was likely that the audio files Hyukjae uploaded from his phone last night were simply corrupt. It _could_  be a reasonable culprit behind the screech of static that had interrupted the recording, but it doesn’t make much sense for Leeteuk’s voice to be cut from playback, and  _only_  Leeteuk’s voice. No matter what Hyukjae did to mess with the volume and amplify the sound, nothing was there. Silence, static.

Donghae clears his throat. “Leeteuk is strong, don’t you think?”

He can feel Hyukjae watching hm. “Yeah, he is. Hey, are you sure –”

“I’m sure, Hyukjae,” Donghae says gently, making sure to meet his eyes as steadily as possible.

“You don’t have to do this.” He looks at Donghae pleadingly.  _Please don’t do this_.

“I want to.”

Licking his lips, Hyukjae tries a different tactic. “If you feel like you need to leave, you can. Kyuhyun and I can finish the investigation. Donghae, if anything happens to you –“

“Nothing will happen.”

Hyukjae closes his eyes briefly, rubbing a hand across them. “Look, I know we committed to this. I know this family needs help and I want to do this for them, but I don’t  _want_ to risk it. I honestly don’t.” He pauses because Donghae has reached over and settled a hand at his nape, running the back of his knuckles over the short hair. Hyukjae lets him, just for a moment, until he takes hold of Donghae’s wrist and gently removes his hand. “I can’t handle it if I let you get hurt again.”

It stings a little, that guilt in Hyukjae’s voice. Twisting his wrist out of his grasp, Donghae lifts his hand again, this time to trace a line along his jaw.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Hyukjae’s shoulders relax. “I know. Just please try to let me protect you, okay?”

“Okay.” Donghae can do that.

Hyukjae knocks their foreheads together with a resigned sigh, and in the next second presses his mouth to Donghae’s, soft but insistent. The kiss holds for one second, two. Three.

When Donghae pulls back Hyukjae doesn’t move, eyes still squeezed shut so tight.

 

-

 

The mood this morning is a complete turnaround from yesterday. When they knock on the door, Kyuhyun standing behind them and staring up at the house, there comes a shout of “They’re here!” from inside. A moment later, Shindong yanks the door open, Yesung’s small face peering around from behind him.

Donghae immediately falls into a 90-degree bow, hair falling off his forehead. Yesung giggles. Donghae straightens in time to see Hyukjae shaking his head at a wide-eyed Shindong.

“Ignore him, he’s crazy.”

Donghae grins and Shindong relaxes, but not without dipping his head toward them in a distracted, unsure bow of his own while Yesung scampers back down the hallway.

Leeteuk appears then, looking a lot more well-rested than he had yesterday. Donghae can’t exactly say the same for himself, but the presence that had hung heavy around the house yesterday is gone for now, and it seems like everyone can feel its absence.

“Hyukjae-ssi, Donghae-ssi, come in,” Leeteuk says. Hyukjae steps inside, waving him off as Donghae follows suit.

“No need to be formal,” he says, formally, just as Kangin enters the front room.

“Let’s strike up a bargain. Nobody speaks formally.”

“Except for him.” Hyukjae points a thumb over his shoulder at Kyuhyun, who bows a shallow hello.

“I’m Kyuhyun,” he says, ignoring Hyukjae, “I’m the tech guy. Please tell me this place has a good electrical set-up.”

“We met yesterday,” Leeteuk remarks with a dimpled smile, and Kyuhyun nods. “As far as we know the house was re-wired when it was renovated, you shouldn’t have any trouble. Anyone hungry?”

They trail down the outer hallway and into the kitchen, where the rest of the kids sit at a table surrounded with so much food that Donghae wonders how they can ever keep the kitchen stocked.

“You don’t have to feed us, really,” Hyukjae is saying while Donghae waves at Sungmin and makes eye-contact with a solemn looking Kibum.

“Are you kidding, we make enough food to feed a small army around here. There’s plenty to go around.”

They tuck in – Donghae realizes that he’s starving – and lets the noise of the busy kitchen settle around him. They’re nervous, but somehow they have complete faith in him and Hyukjae, and that’s going to help them a lot. Listening to Hyukjae answer Sungmin’s questions about his work, to Kangin exasperatedly trying to get Yesung and Kibum to stop arguing over the last of the short ribs, and to Ryeowook quietly slurping his soup is almost enough to put Donghae’s mind off the fact that he would have been heading home right now.

Byunghun had been easygoing when Hyukjae called last night to ask that he stay and watch Ara indefinitely. His classes haven’t started yet so it’s not really an imposition to ask him to stay in their apartment for a while instead of his tiny dorm. He’d offered to let them tell Ara herself over FaceTime and Donghae had nearly refused.

Hyukjae, holding the phone on his open palm between them, had looked at Donghae with expectation as Byunghun went to find Ara in her room. Donghae knew that he’d regret it if he didn’t see her. So they’d traded the phone the between them as they explained they had to work longer, and Ara had watched them with sleepy eyes and a small confused crease in her brow, touching the little screen with her curious hands.

The sound of the front door opening and closing shakes Donghae from his memories. “Hey! Where is everyone,” a new voice calls, then mutters, “this place is huge, what the hell.”

Kyuhyun looks up from the other side of the table and makes eye contact with Donghae, who shrugs.

“Oh,” says Kangin, “we forgot to mention that,” while Leeteuk trots into the hallway. “He’s a friend of ours, Kim Heechul. We told him you were coming and he thinks he needs to make sure you’re not trying to brainwash us or something.”

“Brainwash?” Donghae says, but before Kangin can answer Leeteuk is back with the newcomer in tow.

“This is what happens when you don’t invite Kim Heechul to a housewarming,” Heechul says by way of greeting. “You get cursed.”

He laughs at his own joke, and despite his rudeness the kids sound excited when they chorus a “Hi, Hyung.” Donghae exchanges a look with Hyukjae.

To Heechul’s credit, he beams at the five children, laughing as Yesung collides with his legs in a hug before turning to look at the strangers.

“Lee Hyukjae,” Hyukjae says, standing and ducking his head in a polite bow. “This is Lee Donghae and Cho Kyuhyun. We’re here to brainwash your friends.”

Heechul stares at him for a second. Then he laughs, loud and full of genuine humor this time, a sound that puts a smug smile on Hyukjae’s face. When Donghae lets himself focus on it, Heechul’s aura is full of energy in rolling, shifting waves rather than the steadiness of most auras. Donghae likes him immediately.

“Okay, Lee Hyukjae, Lee Donghae, Cho Kyuhyun. I don’t believe you. But this guy” – he claps Leeteuk on the shoulder - “looks like shit. So I don’t care what you say as long as these kids don’t have nightmares anymore.”

“Who’s getting nightmares,” Shindong mutters into his soup bowl, dour.

Heechul walks around the table and ruffles his hair while Shindong fights him off. “Ah don’t be like that Donghee. The ghost people are here to catch it or whatever.”

“We don’t catch anything,” Kyuhyun says calmly over the sound of Shindong protesting the use of his real name. “We record evidence.”

Kyuhyun hasn’t yet learned to ignore it. Donghae has been dealing with skeptics his whole life; there’s not much he hasn’t heard, and while Hyukjae can get a little tense about it, he doesn’t engage in arguments anymore. Kyuhyun is very good at holding a deadly calm.

“Speaking of recording evidence, thank you for the delicious food but we should start setting up. Kyuhyun? Want to do a quick tour of the house?” Hyukjae is already halfway out the door, so Kyuhyun has no choice but to follow.

Heechul watches them go, pulling a plate toward himself and smirking towards Donghae. “Well I’ll give myself a tour later, I guess.”

“You could have come to visit any time, Heechul,” Kangin says dryly, then adds, “Yesung, did you clean your dishes or did you leave them for Kibum again?”

Yesung, who is about to run out of the kitchen, halts in the doorway with Ryeowook at his heels. Sungmin laughs, eyes flickering towards Donghae – he’s very curious – and Yesung slinks back towards the sink.

Without Hyukjae or Kyuhyun, Donghae feels like he’s overstayed his welcome. He cleans his plate silently, listening to Heechul talk in winding words about what he’s been up to since Leeteuk and Kangin’s family left Seoul. None of it makes any sense, but everyone nods along anyway.

Excusing himself, Donghae walks out into the silent hall. He hears faint voices over the fading din of the kitchen, but takes the long way around the perimeter hallway. The other side of the house is quiet in more ways than one.

When he passes the entrance to the common room, Donghae sees Kyuhyun making vague gestures around them while Hyukjae nods along. They’re talking about setting up the base of operations in there.

“… should set up the backup generator too. And we can just have everyone sleep here for the night if you don’t think it will be too distracting to monitor.”

“Hyuk-ah.” Donghae leans around the doorframe. “Not in here.”

They both turn to look at him. Usually, base is set up in the center of a home; energy tends to circle around it like the eye of a storm. The center is hard to hold. It’s easier to operate from a quiet base, one less likely to be subject to interference.

There’s a safe place in this home somewhere, Donghae can feel it. But he doesn’t think it’s a place they can get to, and it’s definitely not the common room.

“The kitchen?” Hyukjae suggests.

Donghae smiles. “The kitchen is perfect.” He hadn’t felt anything out of the ordinary in there, at least. He’d just walked out of the one room of the house completely filled with life, motion, positive energy. “In here, we probably want a full set-up.”

“IR?”

“Yeah, IR, motion sensors, the grid, we should probably get pictures in here before nightfall.”

“Mm,” Hyukjae glances at the notebook in his hands, “I thought the grid should go in the east wing.”

“We can move it if we have to,” Kyuhyun suggests.

“Yeah, we’ll see how things go tonight. Point the cameras there.” Donghae gestures to the fireplace. At Kyuhyun’s nod he steps back into the hallway, feeling Hyukjae’s eyes on him as he goes.

He continues on. The house is bathed in warm late-morning light, everything settled and sleepy feeling. Whatever it was that Donghae felt yesterday is absent for now, which is frustrating only in that he’s worried about tonight’s investigation being a bust. He passes the east common room entrance and stops – there’s Kyuhyun and Hyukjae’s voices again, but another one too, almost too quiet to hear. Donghae follows the sound of it down the east wing.

It’s Ryeowook. Donghae blinks; he must have slipped out of the kitchen when Yesung was being told to clean his dishes. He’s playing by himself in his room, which would be normal enough, but the five-year old’s chatter is hushed and punctuated by short pauses. Like a conversation with only one participant.

The door is slid all the way open, so Donghae knocks on the frame and Ryeowook jumps.

“Sorry. Can I come in?”

Ryeowook’s face lights up and he nods enthusiastically, making Donghae chuckle. “Will you play with us, hyung?”

“Sure.” Donghae moves into the room and sits down on one of the beds. “What did you mean by ‘us’?”

His face falls. After a moment of fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, Ryeowook says, “Nothing,” looking embarrassed.

“Isn’t there someone else, then?”

The child busies himself with a toy gundam lying among some others on the desk between the two beds. He shrugs one shoulder, extending and contracting the toy’s arm mechanically. He sounds hurt in a way someone his age can’t control when he says, “I thought you’d see. Appa said you can see stuff.”

“I can, sometimes. Ryeowook, do you want to tell me who you were talking to earlier?”

He shakes his head.

“Why not?”

“Yesung hyung said I’m making her up. Kibum hyung too, and he never lies.”

Donghae shifts on the bed, pulling the ragged cloth of the jegi out from his pocket. “Is this hers?”

Ryeowook’s eyes widen when he sees it. He’s quiet for a long moment, eyes focusing oddly to his left, then he breaks out into a grin again. “Yeong-Ja says yes!”

Donghae closes his fingers around the cloth, eyes falling shut.  _Yeong-Ja_. She’s here now. He frowns, expecting the same positive signature he felt from the jegi yesterday, but instead is met with caution and fear.

He opens his eyes when Ryeowook touches his knee cautiously and says, “Donghae hyung, don’t worry. Yeong-Ja noona is nice.”

“I know she is,” he says, failing to resist the temptation to ruffle the hair on top of Ryeowook’s head. He shakes Donghae off, brushing his hair back down with his hands until the fringe falls flat again, laughing as he ducks out of Donghae’s reach. Donghae chuckles, glancing around the room in hopes that he might see something there. Yeong-Ja, if she’s still around, doesn’t seem to be strong enough to help him out any.

“How often does Yeong-Ja play with you?”

“Dunno. Not long. She always says she has to go.” Ryeowook hands him one of the gundams, sorting through a pile of accessories.

“Where does she go?”

“Ummm. Wiat,” he says, exchanging the sword that Donghae’s gundam is holding for a scythe, “Okay. She goes to hide.”

The word drops like an anchor into his gut, a great tug. He reaches out but can’t feel her anymore, the spirit having depleted what little energy she’d been using to communicate with Ryeowook, who doesn’t seem bothered by her absence. Donghae blinks against a sudden pressure behind his eyes, the lingering sense of someone else’s pain mixed with his own sadness about what that means for the spirit.

He glances down at the toy in his hands. Ara has some of these. Donghae bites the inside of his cheek.

“Ryeowook.” He swallows and holds a smile on his face. “Thank you, but I can’t play right now. Maybe later, okay?”

The child’s good spirits seemingly can’t be broken by the weight Donghae feels now; he simply nods and takes the gundam back when Donghae offers, standing it up beside the others on the table, his back to Donghae as he leaves in a rush back down the hall.

Some of his suspicions are starting to click into place, mind racing. It’s possible, even, that the children are in more danger than –

“There you are. We’re about to start unloading the truck, so… Donghae?” He must look startled and upset, because Hyukjae’s eyes are wide and worried. He places his hands on Donghae’s shoulders to steady him. “Did something happen?”

“Hyuk.” Donghae swallow a lump in his throat. “It’s a child. She’s just a little girl.”

Hyukjae relaxes, but his gaze on Donghae is still full of concern. “Did you see something?”

“Yes.” Donghae squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “No, I mean, not physically. Ryeowook told me.”

Hyukjae raises his eyebrows. “The little one?”

“Yeah, he told me he sees her. She’s weak though, and he said – Ryeowook told me she has to hide sometimes.”

The hands on his shoulders drop, Hyukjae’s gaze going unfocused. “Hide from what?”

“It’s using her,” Donghae says, hushed. “I think it’s drawing from her energy. Probably has been for a long time.”

“Which is why it’s so strong.” Hyukjae finishes the thought.

“A child,” Donghae repeats. He can recall the memory of how she had felt, a heaviness that no child should have to take with her into death. He wishes Hyukjae was still touching him. Instead, Donghae lets himself focus in on Hyukjae’s aura – a complicated sort of worry, yes, and that same sadness that Donghae is feeling, yes; but still there’s an overwhelming gleam of silver, resonant and calm, that helps him gather himself.

“Did you say we’re starting to set up?”

“Yeah.” Hyukjae’s mouth is set in a determined line.

“Okay. Let’s get this started.”

 

-

When Kyuhyun slides the van door open, Kangin lets out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of stuff. Are you going to use all of that?”

“Well, you’ve got a big house.”

Leeteuk takes a peek inside only to step back hastily when Kyuhyun shoves an electrical cord reel towards him. “Here, we have a lot of these.”

He hops back out of the van holding a computer monitor. “Just start grabbing things and bringing them into the kitchen. Don’t drop anything!” A pause. “Please.”

Leeteuk turns around to see Sungmin and Heechul trailing out of the house.

“Need a hand?” Sungmin asks Kyuhyun with a smile. Kyuhyun hefts the monitor in his arms for a better grip and nods.

“Sure, we don’t mind the help.”

Kangin snickers, low enough for only Leeteuk to hear. “Now he’s polite.” Leeteuk grins and grabs another reel of cord to take into the house.

The next hour passes quickly, Leeteuk grabbing equipment and letting Hyukjae tell him which room to leave it so that Kyuhyun and Donghae can start setting it up. They even manage to get the kids to help, charging them with taping all of the extension cords along the edges of walls so that nobody trips over them. Hyukjae explains that they’ll set up some of the equipment just to record for later review, like the IR cameras and EVP recorders, but they want to set up cameras that feed onto monitors in the kitchen so they can be watched live. There’s just too much ground to cover, and since they’re not working on a residual type haunt, they need to make sure they’re not missing anything in any part of the house.

“We’re not just doing this for research,” Hyukjae tells him, adjusting the settings on his thermal imaging device. “If there’s something here, we’ll need to get as much evidence as we can in case we need any help from the Church.”

“ _If_  there’s something here?”

Hyukjae pauses, looking off to the right. Leeteuk follows his line of sight and sees Donghae, who is currently handing off a camera tripod to Kyuhyun. “Legally, I can’t say that there’s any paranormal activity going on unless we capture inexplicable evidence. But I will say that Donghae is rarely wrong.”

Hearing his name, Donghae turns in their direction. He looks at Leeteuk with kind eyes, but the smile he’s wearing is only polite. There’s nothing in his expression that says Leeteuk should be worried, but he can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t something routine for either of them. They haven’t even started yet, but he knows this is something more like the cautionary stories they were telling at the university yesterday.

Donghae’s eyes flicker away and some sort of communication must pass between him and Hyukjae, because he turns back to Kyuhyun, says something that makes him nod, and then heads in their direction.

“Kyuhyun says that he should be okay on his own for now so long as Sungmin gives him a hand. If that’s alright?” Donghae tacks the question on like an afterthought. Leeteuk laughs.

“Sungmin has been trying to record EVPs with his phone for a week, I probably couldn’t stop him from helping if I tried.”

“Okay, good. We have a few things to discuss.” Donghae gives that polite smile again. “Kitchen?”

He has to head out to their car to grab something first, so Leeteuk goes to find Kangin in the interim. He finds him in the front hall talking to Heechul, who refused to move anything heavy twenty minutes ago and is apparently just going to help set up cameras when they’ve been placed.

“Jungsoo, I’m staying, right?” Heechul asks in a tone that means it’s not going to matter  _what_ Leeteuk says.  “I made a bet with that guy.”

Leeteuk blinks. “What? What guy?”

“I told him not to,” Kangin says, and he punches Heechul in the shoulder, who stares open-mouthed at him as if Kangin has just offended his mother. Or his person, which is the more likely case. “He told Kyuhyun that he thinks they fake the evidence and now they’re betting on whether or not we catch anything.”

“Heechul, are you saying we’re lying?” Leeteuk says it sternly and with a straight face just so he can watch Heechul panic a bit as he pack-pedals. He laughs exaggeratedly and bats Leeteuk on the shoulder like a cat.

“What! No, no, no. I believe you, Jungsoo-hyung.”

“I know you don’t,” Leeteuk says, but he loses it and starts laughing when Kangin mouths,  _“He’s going to lose”_  from behind Heechul’s back. Heechul realizes he’s being tricked and starts hitting Leeteuk in earnest, calls him an ungrateful bastard, and then storms off to presumably torment Kyuhyun some more.

To be honest, it’s the first time Leeteuk has laughed like this in weeks. He meets Kangin’s crescent moon-eyed smile, feeling hopeful for the first time.

Then he remembers Donghae and Hyukjae waiting for them in the kitchen and sobers. “They want to talk to us,” he says.

The smile fades slowly from Kangin’s face, but he leads the way.

 

-

The kitchen is now a mess of monitors and equipment, but there’s a clear space at the end of the table. The four of them mimic their seats from yesterday, only instead of a recorder between them on the table, there are a few computer printouts and hand-written notes. Donghae notices the slight nervousness running through Leeteuk now, apprehension that he doesn’t really blame him for. He smiles, but what can he really say? Nothing has gotten any worse since yesterday. But that’s hardly a reassurance.

Hyukjae reaches for one of the papers on the table.  “We want to just go over the research we did last night. There’s not much, but we’re hoping to fill in some blanks during the investigation. It’s always best to get as much history on a property that is possible to learn from, so we contacted the realtors who initially sold this house before its renovation. I haven’t heard back from them yet, so unfortunately we don’t have much to go on, but we think we have a clue about why the property was sold. It’s… well, not surprising.”

“I don’t think the guest house was operational for very long, maybe a month? Two?” Donghae says. “They had a website but it was taken down. There were some comments on a hotel review website, though.” He glances at the sheet of paper and then turns it around, sliding it across the table for them to see. Leeteuk leans over the page, a print-out of the website, scanning it curiously.

“Looks like most of the guests were foreigners, but we asked a Canadian friend of ours to help so you can trust the translations.” Most of the reviews are in English, but Donghae had scribbled the translations beside them. He’d texted Henry last night to ask about them. Henry had seemed non-plussed with his request, not even bothering to ask what the translations are for, and the conversation somehow ended with Donghae promising that he and Hyukjae would take Ara to visit him some time soon. He has a strange yearning for Henry to be here now – he’s always so bright, he eases the tension out of a room without even trying.

The first one says,  _“Really beautiful, not very relaxing. Children running the halls at night but I suppose that’s not the Guest House’s fault!”_

And the next: “ _if you want to disconnect for a few days, this is the place to do it, because there is NO internet connection and the one tv they have was on the fritz the whole time I stayed here. not worth it, stay in seoul.”_

_“Staff not very friendly. Came for a relaxing time but was rushed to leave.”_

And the last one, its English counterpart all in capital letters, just says: “ _DO NOT STAY HERE.”_

Kangin points at that one. “Kind of blunt, huh?”

“These reviews just fit the profile, really,” Hyukjae says. “These aren’t evidence, but it does seem more likely that whatever spirits are here is what drove the previous owners to sell.”

“I don’t blame them,” Leeteuk blurts, then widens his eyes like he hadn’t meant to say that. Kangin’s arm moves across the space between their chairs and Leeteuk relaxes his shoulders. “Sorry. This house is just really important to us. We thought we were making the right choice.”

“You were.” Hyukjae assures him. “Nobody asks for this. And we’re – we’re glad you reached out for our help.”

After a moment of silence, Kangin speaks up. “So, we don’t have any clues yet, but what would cause something like this? I mean, what are your theories?”

Donghae opens his mouth and closes it again. Hyukjae leans back in his seat andcatches his eye, gesturing for him to go on. “Actually, we do have somewhat of a clue. I don’t want to worry you, but –”

“Hyukjae, we’ve placed everything but we can’t position the cameras until they’re connected to base,” Kyuhyun interrupts, leaning halfway in the doorway. “… Am I interrupting something?”

Kangin stands up, Leeteuk slowly rising out of his seat as well. “Do you need to set up in here? We can just move into the office.”

“It’s fine, sorry, Kyuhyun has no tact,” Hyukjae says, but he stands as well. Kyuhyun shrugs. “Can I see where you put the grid? We were just finishing up in here.”

Kyuhyun nods and disappears into the hallway. Donghae stands up uncertainly until Hyukjae meets his eye and inclines his head towards Leeteuk. Then he follows Kyuhyun.

“I’m sorry, but what didn’t you want us to worry about?”

Leeteuk looks nervous again and Donghae mentally kicks himself. “I uh, came across something this morning I think you should know about. Have you noticed anything odd about Ryeowook lately?”

Now Kangin looks distressed. Hyukjae is much better at this. Donghae concentrates on keeping calm and tries to see this from their perspective, gathering his thoughts carefully.

“This is not a bad thing for him, he’s in no danger, but I overheard Ryeowook talking with a benign spirit this morning.”

There’s a palpable silence, the other two staring at him. Then Leeteuk lets out a breath, amused.

“No,” Leeteuk shakes his head, “That’s just  - he’s young and the move upset him, that’s just an imaginary friend. I shouldn’t encourage it, with all that’s been happening I thought his little head was just trying to explain away the, uh… supernatural experiences.”

Donghae chews the inside of his lip, not sure how he can explain this. They had just spent all afternoon setting up equipment to catch proof, and now he is asking them to believe just his word. “It’s not an imaginary friend,” he says gently. “Ryeowook told me her name is Yeong-Ja. She’s not the malevolent being we’re dealing with here. She’s a spirit, something that was once human. Just a little girl who died. I’d love to back this up with proof, but for now I’m going to ask you to trust me, and know that she isn’t harmful.”

Kangin processes this, arms folded across his chest as he frowns at the floor. “What does this mean… about Ryeowook?” he asks, raising his eyes to Donghae.

“What does it mean?” he echoes.

“You told us people can’t see spirits without instruments,” Kangin clarifies.

“Oh. It’s the same as what we told you this morning; if a person is open to the spirit world, they act as a conduit. That’s what your son is. Children are more susceptible to supernatural experiences because their minds are more open in general. To them, every kind of reality is possible and believable. And Yeong-Ja… she needs him.” Donghae draws the inside of his cheek between his teeth again, trying to keep the worry out of what he has to say next. Leeteuk touches him gently on the elbow, urging him to continue, and Donghae smiles at him gratefully. “If she were the only spirit we’re dealing with, this ordeal would be routine for us. You two don’t have to worry about Ryeowook in particular, but I want you to know that Yeong-Ja’s presence here  _does_  indicate that this is more complicated of a case then the majority of what we deal with.”

“Are you out of your depth, here?” Kangin asks suddenly. His voice is sharp but concern is radiating from him visibly. He’s not upset with them, he’s afraid.

“They’ve seen worse,” Leeteuk says suddenly. “You weren’t at the presentation yesterday, Youngwoon.”

Donghae gets the feeling that a statement like that would be dismissive on anyone else, but Leeteuk says it calmy and Kangin’s expression clears, like he’s been chastised. He looks Donghae dead in the eye.

“I didn’t mean to insult you, I’m just upset.”

Beside him, Leeteuk nods imperceptibly, and Kangin relaxes.  Watching the display lifts something from Donghae’s shoulders – fear, he realizes. He suddenly feels a little more optimistic about their chances with this thing. Leeteuk and Kangin strengthen one another.

“Don’t worry about insulting me, I’ve handled worse,” he says, glancing a light punch off Kangin’s shoulder. He doesn’t react to it at all, but some of the concern clears out of his aura. “Leeteuk’s right, we have dealt with preternatural beings before, but I was hoping… I was really hoping this would be a straightforward case.” He doesn’t usually admit anything like that, and if Hyukjae were here he’d probably have stepped on his foot before he could finish that sentence. He rubs a hand over his face and continues. “Look, guys, this thing has power. Ryeowook told me that Yeong-Ja said she would keep him safe. That’s why he seems so comfortable talking to her and about her, why he isn’t afraid. But to me, that just indicates that there’s something she wants to keep him safe  _from_. Remember what we said about spirits needing to draw on energy to manifest? That’s why Ryeowook can see her – she’s using a lot of energy.”

“Does that mean we’ll be able to catch her? Get a picture or something like that for proof?”

“Maybe.  But… it’s also what worries me. She isn’t drawing the energy herself: seeing her is just the result of the malevolent being using her presence to manifest. Whatever this demon is, it’s feeding off her. It’s taking her spirit energy, and the energies of your family, and of the things you all hold precious.”

He pauses. Hyukjae is back. He hasn’t come into the room yet, but when Donghae looks towards the doorway he steps into view, face expressionless. Leeteuk and Kangin twist to look, and Leeteuk actually gives a little wave, but Hyukjae only nods and looks back at Donghae, waiting for him to continue. He does.

“People are afraid to hear the word ‘evil,’ and I’m sorry to make you face it, but you’ll have to. Evil isn’t a state of being, it’s a principle. When someone – something – destroys innocence for its own gain, that’s when it becomes evil. You know the saying, bad things happen to good people?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “It’s because malevolence takes what’s pure and corrupts it. Your family is beautiful. Your family didn’t ask for this, and it doesn’t deserve this, but that’s why it’s happening to you. Being open to love is what draws this thing to you, but it’s also the only thing that can save you. Many people feel like they need to close themselves off in order to protect the ones they love, but the malevolent spirit has already taken hold of you. You have to let it know that it can’t win. It can’t take goodness away from you. It can’t have you.”

His voice breaks on the last and that’s what has Hyukjae coming fully into the room. Donghae tucks his head as Hyukjae settles cool palms to the side of his face and mutters Donghae’s name. Just his name, but his voice is imploring:  _are you sure you can do this?_

Donghae looks up at him and puts on a smile, wry. “Haven’t you been listening?”

“Yeah,” is all Hyukjae says, but it’s resigned.

He moves off after he’s sure Donghae isn’t about to have another breakdown. He’s sorry for the thought, but Hyukjae can’t hide much from him and Donghae knows it’s always on his mind, that this case or that case might be the last straw and he’ll lock himself up again. But he won’t. He won’t let that happen again, and he won’t do that to Hyukjae again.

Kangin had sunk back into his chair when Donghae was talking, and only drags his hand away from his face when Hyukjae pulls out the chair across from him. Leeteuk is sitting quiet and close but his gaze far-off, unfocused. Donghae doesn’t listen to what they’re saying, lingering for a moment on Leeteuk, noticing that the exhaustion that had lingered before has returned. Yesterday, Donghae had sat at this very table and promised them that he and Hyukjae would fix this. Now he makes another promise, but not to them.  _You won’t get them_ , he thinks.  _You won’t win._

The house doesn’t answer.


	6. Chapter 6

Just before the sun begins to set, while the team is doing final checks on the camera and equipment set-up, Leeteuk slides open the door to the yard and sits quietly on the step. The air is still, the small buzz and click of summer bugs in the distance signaling the end of the day.

 

The kids have been good. It’s almost strange not having to spend all day mediating their child-fights, trying to get them to help with household duties, watching them play… yes, that’s what feels different. He sighs. Things haven’t been comfortable and normal since the first few days after they moved in, and Leeteuk tries very hard to keep the knowledge at a distance. That moving was his idea, bringing them here was his idea - he knows that what’s happening is not his fault. Kangin certainly doesn’t seem to be blaming himself. Leeteuk only wishes he could do the same.

 

The door slides open behind him, and Leeteuk doesn’t turn to look when Donghae sits gently beside him. He doesn’t say anything.

 

He’s not what Leeteuk would have expected out of someone in Donghae’s profession. He’d protested at first when Sungmin had showed him the little webpage announcing that paranormal investigators would be giving a seminar at the university, but nothing about the site had seemed gimmicky at all. Still, Donghae’s easy presence and Hyukjae’s confidence were at odds with the drama and fear-mongering that Leeteuk had been worried about when he brought them to his home. Having the three of them here has been, for want of a better phrase, a blessing.

 

After a while, Leeteuk notices that Donghae has pulled out a camera and is taking pictures of the tree line. He stops every so often to check a photo’s result on the display, and by the time Leeteuk realizes he’s been staring at the camera screen, it’s because Donghae has begun cycling through the older photos saved to the memory card instead of taking more.

 

“They’re really nice,” Leeteuk remarks. “Are you a photographer?”

 

“No, it’s just a hobby.” Donghae shrugs easily.

 

“You mean, besides ghost-hunting,” Leeteuk chuckles.

 

Donghae smiles and swipes to a new photo, this time of a more urban landscape than the ones they’d been looking at before. “Parapsychology is less of a hobby and more of a lifestyle when you’re me,” he says with some humor. “Professionally, I’m a sports therapist.”

 

“Oh? That’s… sorry, not to be rude, it’s just not what I would have guessed.”

 

“It lets me make my own hours, so I don’t have to limit investigations or worry about taking time off. I like it,” he says with a smile, “I like helping people get back on their feet.”

 

If he realized the pun he’d just made, Donghae doesn’t let on. He slides to a new photo, this one of a small child holding a fluffy orange dog. Leeteuk must be thinking sluggishly, because it’s not until Donghae slides to the next photo - one of the same little girl, this time asleep on a couch and slumped against an equally asleep Hyukjae - that he remembers.

 

“Your daughter, right? What did you say her name is?”

 

Donghae says, “Ara,” and smiles. In the next photo, Ara is wearing only one sock, the pant on her other leg rucked up as Hyukjae attempts to pull down the hem of her shirt  - but she’s got a fist around his hair, Hyukjae’s mouth open in pain as the little girl giggles, eyes alight. Leeteuk finds himself laughing, Donghae shaking his head fondly at the picture.

 

“They can be a handful, huh?”

 

“No kidding, and this was a good day.”

 

Leeteuk chuckles, thinking of when Ryeowook was that age. He was a lot fussier than Yesung at three - although, three year-old Yesung was adjusting to his new lot in life and curiosity did well for him.

 

“She’s not really ours, you know,” Donghae cuts in to Leeteuk’s reverie. “Not biologically, obviously. Not even legally.The adoption is technically under Hyukjae’s mother.”

 

Leeteuk hums in sympathy. “Yeah, none of our kids are actually ours, either. We’re a foster operation. But that’s not what counts, right?”

 

Donghae leans back on the step, letting the camera settle in his lap. “No. It’s love that makes a family.” They look at one another for a moment, and then Donghae ducks his face to hide a grin, saying, “Hyukjae would shove me for being cheesy.”

 

Leeteuk laughs louder than he has in weeks, stress and guilt leaving him for only a moment.

 

“But he’s worse than I am,” Donghae says, seemingly to himself, and Leeteuk pushes himself to stand as the last of this strange humor leaves his chest. He stretches, feeling light, and pats Donghae on the shoulder.

 

“Come on, I’m going to start dinner. We have a lot of mouths to feed.”

  
  
 

-

  
  
 

Half of the long kitchen table is now cluttered with monitors and equipment, cords tied and taped out of the way, and Kyuhyun sitting behind the screens is going to be more or less a permanent fixture for the night. Donghae, seated on the clean half of the table, curls his hands immediately around the coffee mug that Hyukjae sets in front of him.

 

“Okay, we have two sets of walkies and seven investigators. Assuming you’ll be joining us, Heechul-ssi?”

 

“Hell yes, I have a bet to win,” Heechul says with a grin. Kyuhyun snorts from behind the monitors, but doesn’t respond.

 

Hyukjae sets his own mug of coffee on the table with a dull thunk, milky liquid sloshing dangerously. He always makes it so sweet, but Donghae is most likely to end up finishing it for him. “Well, Kyuhyun needs one back here, he and Sungmin can share. Hae, are we splitting up?”

 

“I think so, for now. What about you two?”

 

Kangin and Leeteuk look over from where they’re standing by the sink, putting away the dishes from the late dinner they’d all shared after set-up. “You mean, are we splitting up?” Kangin clarifies.

 

Hyukjae nods. “It’s your choice. If we have one walkie with each of two teams and one back here at base, we can give one to the kids in the study. Just in case. Sound good?”

 

“Let’s stay together,” Leeteuk says, leaning back against the counter.

 

Hyukjae looks at Donghae. “Okay then. Who’s stuck with Heechul?”

 

There is an immediate and loud protest, Heechul indignantly insisting that they should be so lucky to have him here, while Hyukjae struggles not to laugh. Donghae finds himself smiling down at his coffee.

 

“Well he has to be accounted for, we can’t have anyone running around here with a sheet over their head, destroying our credibility,” Kyuhyun says mildly, not looking up from the monitor. Sungmin covers a laugh with the back of his hand.

 

“‘Credibility,’” Heechul mutters sarcastically. Hyukjae picks up his mug and takes a long drink, no doubt to stop himself from replying.

 

“Okay, okay, we’ll settle this with rock, paper, scissors, loser gets Heechul,” Kangin suggests, cheeks pulled up in the effort to keep from laughing.

 

“Excuse me? Hey, loser should be proud of it. There’s nothing wrong with losing!!”

 

Hyukjae rolls up his sleeves to the sound of laughter while Heechul scowls at them all, and Donghae reluctantly releases the warm mug and stands. It ends pretty quickly - Donghae loses both rounds. The first, out of chance, and the second because he knows Hyukjae favors scissors.

 

It’s loud in the kitchen again, Hyukjae high-fiving Leeteuk and Kangin, until Donghae grabs one of the walkies and says, “Okay, Heechul hyung, you’re with me.”

 

He ignores the silence, shrugging lightly when Hyukjae mouths “Hyung?” at him, and switches on his walkie. Heechul is harmless - there are worse skeptics out there, and Donghae isn’t bothered. He knows what’s real, and that’s all that really matters.

 

Finally they set their walkies to the same channel, and then it’s time for lights out. Kangin needs to take a moment to check on the kids, so Donghae heads off toward the east wing first, Heechul in tow.

 

Donghae admits, he half expected Heechul to be a pain. And - yeah, he is a pain, but not on purpose. Donghae only has to remind him to keep his voice hushed a few times while he takes base readings of the EMF in the various rooms off the hallway, and Heechul writes down the numbers dutifully, asking too-loud questions the whole time.

 

They enter Ryeowook’s room last and Donghae flicks on the IR camera he’d snagged from the kitchen before they began. Heechul comes up close, looking over his shoulder as Donghae scans the room.

 

“What is that?” Heechul says, the laugh evident in his voice. “Heat sensor?”

 

“Infrared,” Donghae nods. “It displays thermals.”

 

“Yeah, but why? Gonna catch a ghost with that? They don’t have bodies.”

 

“Of course not, but they draw energy from their surroundings. Heat is energy.” Donghae places his hand around the bed frame and holds it there for a second, then moves out of the way and points the camera. The place his hand had been is clearly outlined in an orange hue, contrasting to the blues and yellows of the bed frame. “You can see what’s been affected. Although we’re looking more for anything suspiciously cold than we are for any heat signatures.”

 

“Like when you start to see your breath and the ghost is about to jump out and murder you -”

 

“No,” Donghae cuts him off, smiling indulgently. “Not like that, not like the movies.”

 

“But you can see ghosts, right? What’s the point of this?” Heechul waves his hands at the equipment.  
 

Donghae takes a moment to properly scan the room before switching the machine off. “I can’t see them unless they’re using a lot of energy. And I can’t prove it.”

 

Usually this is the part where a sceptic will feel validated, and Donghae doesn’t want to deal with that right now, so it’s a lucky thing that his walkie chooses that moment to squawk to life.

 

“North wing, clear. I’m going to work on debunking the doors and I need the IR camera.”

 

“East wing is clear. Can you get me a K2 meter from base?”

 

“Location?”

 

“Ryeowook and Yesung’s room.”

 

“Copy.”

 

“Over and out.”

 

“Roger that.”

 

“Hyukjae. Just go.”

 

It’s less than a minute before Hyukjae shows up with the K2 meter, nodding at Heechul as he enters the room. Heechul, lying flat out on the opposite bed, just stifles a yawn in response.

 

“Let me know when you’re done so I don’t disturb you. We should get a reading of the corridors tonight.” Hyukjae asks in that not-quite whisper that investigations always necessitate.

 

“I’m planning to hang around here until 1 just in case the knocking occurs.”

 

“Okay. Don’t let him fall asleep.”

 

Donghae laughs under his breath and Heechul sits up to glare at Hyukjae. They exchange equipment, Donghae’s IR camera for Hyukjae’s regular camcorder and the meter, and  Hyukjae leaves. Donghae waits until his footsteps disappear before turning on the K2. He places it alongside the audio recorder which has already been set up on the little table between the beds.

 

“Hyung, I’m going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for this, okay?”

 

He’s half-joking, but Heechul’s expression flits between annoyance and tolerance and then he sighs. “Look, I’m not here to get in the way. It’s hard for me to take this seriously but I’m not going to mess up your investigation or whatever.”

 

“Thank you,” Donghae says simply, then switches his walkie to the base channel, letting Kyuhyun know that he’s going to need radio silence unless there’s an emergency.

 

“This one is recording our voices,” Donghae says, pointing to the audio device, “and this one picks up on electromagnetic frequencies, like the EMF, but it also picks up on radio frequencies on a more sensitive basis. Problem is, you can’t tell the difference. So if our camera or walkies interfere with the signal, we have no way of knowing.”

 

Reaching across the space between them, he pushes the camcorder into Heechul’s hands. “If you can, focus this on the K2 meter. It’s going to light up if it detects something.”

 

He turns it on dutifully, aiming the lens at the side table. “This is going to be great. Director Kim catches ghosts! Is there anything he can’t do? Oh, but what a shame that his face was not caught on camera.”

 

Donghae does a really, really bad job at hiding his laughter, and Heechul swings the camera in his direction. “Hey! We’re supposed to be quiet,” he says in a harsh whisper.

 

His laughter tapers off. Donghae runs a hand over his face in an attempt to focus on the task at hand. “Okay, Director Kim, camera on the equipment. I’m going to start the interview now.”

 

“Ghost interview? Sounds kind of dull.”

 

“We’ll see.” He waits to make sure the recording light is lit on the camera, and despite his certainty that Yeong-Ja is not around, he hopes he can connect with her anyway.

 

He clears his throat. “East wing, Ryeowook’s room, 12:40 A.M. Donghae and Heechul, K2 recording session.  Second team location is the north wing.” There’s a moment of silence. Heechul looks past the camcorder’s screen and raises an eyebrow.

  
“Now what?”

 

Donghae shrugs. “Now we wait.”

 

-

 

Kangin folds his arms in front of his chest, watching Hyukjae swing one of the doors on its hinges. He opens the door, stands back, watches. Gives it a little push. Watches as it sways gently inward a bare few centimeters.

“So. What, uh. What are we trying to prove again?”

 

Leeteuk, sighing, rubs at his eye with a knuckle and gives Kangin a very unimpressed Look. Hyukjae, on the other hand, doesn’t even react to his tone and Kangin wonders where how his focus is even possible.

 

“We’re trying to disprove it,” he corrects. “These doors don’t seem to sway a lot, which is good, because it doesn’t look like a draft is going to affect them. The door frame isn’t warped either. I’m assuming they’re all built the same way?”

 

“Yes, in both wings.” Leeteuk steps forward, shutting the door they’ve been messing with, the one that leads to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Once it clicks into the frame, he hooks his fingers into the lip at the edge of the door and pulls. It slides open this time, rather than swinging out on a hinge. “We almost always use them like this, sliding. But that night when they all popped open, it was the other way,” he explains.

 

Hyukjae slips his phone out of his pocket, flinching a little at the bright light. “It’s 20 to one, didn’t you say that’s when the knocking should start?”

 

“That’s when it would start, but it hasn’t happened since that night.”

 

“I always wondered if that was a good sign or a bad sign,” Kangin mumbles. Hyukjae doesn’t take the bait - he doesn’t answer. He just slips his phone back into his pocket, looking at the door contemplatively. Admittedly, Kangin hadn’t spent a lot of time wondering that, but Hyukjae’s silence actually has him worried. Thinking about it, as freaky as the knocking had been, things had actually escalated around here when it stopped. He frowns.

 

“Okay, if Leeteuk and I sit on the bed, Kangin, can you knock on the door? Let’s see if we can recreate it.”

 

“If you’re trying to say it was the kids -”

 

“Hey, no, that’s not it,” Hyukjae says calmly. He nods his head toward the camera set up in the far corner of the hallway. “If we can prove that it’s not an environmental factor or a human manipulation, that helps our case.”

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

Leeteuk kicks at the toe of Kangin’s shoe. “Why are you so defensive,” he says, but it’s not a question at all. He just sounds tired.

 

They set up their little experiment. Kangin stands on the other side of the closed door, knocking and banging on it with his fists while Leeteuk directs him from inside - no; it’s too soft; or it’s too loud; or the door shakes too much; eventually, Kangin gets it sort of right.

 

“Okay, come inside,” Hyukjae calls.

 

“So,” Kangin says when he enters, chewing in the inside of his cheek. “Was that helpful, or not?”

 

“It wasn’t the same,” Leeteuk says. “The door didn’t - I mean, I don’t know how to describe it. The door didn’t shake that night, did it? It was just the sound. And it happened to all the doors at once.”

 

“It’s helpful,” Hyukjae agrees. “It’s not going to solve anything, but it gives us some credibility.” He pokes at his phone, now sitting on the bed beside him. “Couple minutes to one. Let’s see if anything happens.”

 

-

  
 

Donghae stares blankly at the wall over Heechul’s shoulder. From somewhere in the house, he hears a dull, blunt sound and glances at his watch.

 

“That’s Hyukjae,” he says for the benefit of the audio recorder, but Heechul’s head pops up from the phone on his lap and he goes, “What?”

 

“Those sounds are not paranormal. It’s probably Hyukjae and the others.” He’s looking at the face of his watch - 5, 4, 3, 2, -

 

Nothing. He listens carefully, but doesn’t hear any similar thuds coming from the other side of the house either. To be sure, he picks up his walkie.

 

“East wing, clear. Was that you guys making noise earlier?”

 

“North wing, clear. That was us earlier. Nothing just now. It’s one a.m., did anything happen over there?”

 

“No, nothing.”

 

A barely audible sigh through the radio static. “Okay, thanks. No luck for you?”

 

“Not yet. Radio silence still in place for now.”

 

“Got it. We’re heading back to base. Over.”

 

Heechul shifts on the bed, hiding a yawn. “Okay, wake me up when something happens then. This is boring.”

 

Donghae just sighs, spending the next few minutes listening idly for the sounds of voices in the hallway. The house is large enough to swallow most of the noise, but it’s enough to distract Donghae from the feeling of Heechul’s annoyance.

 

It’s not much longer after that - he feels a third presence, something not hard to filter out as separate from Heechul’s energy. It’s easy to tune into her after that - Yeong-Ja, the same energy he’d felt from her earlier.

 

“Hi, Yeong-Ja,” Donghae says, putting a finger to his lips when Heechul sits up abruptly. He gestures for him to pick up the camcorder again. “Do you remember me from earlier?”

 

It’s habit to pause after asking a question, ostensibly to make an EVP easier to hear should the audio recorder pick one up. But Heechul snorts and says, “You really expect an answer?”

 

“Shh,” Donghae reminds him. Heechul gives a pretty obnoxious eye-roll, but the recording indicator light is on again, so Donghae doesn't push it.

 

“Yeong-Ja, do you think you can stay and play for a bit? Ryeowook isn’t here, I’m sorry about that, but he needs to sleep right now. But I have a game I want to play if you are comfortable.” He pauses again, holding his breath without realizing, but Yeong-Ja doesn’t disappear this time, and the caution from earlier is not present. He could be sensing curiosity, but he could also be projecting. She’s still weak.

 

Leaning forward, he passes his hand in front of the K2 meter. All of the little red LEDs light up, then dim again once the movement stops. “See these lights? They can’t hurt you. Do you think you can make them light up for me? It’s easy.” He waves his hand again to demonstrate.

 

They wait. Her presence is still there, but it’s hard to detect, and now Donghae is having to filter out both annoyance and skepticism from Heechul. He looks across at him. Heechul has the camera trained on the K2 meter, but he doesn’t look impressed.

 

“Heechul,” Donghae says quietly, “Say hi.”

 

“Are you kidding me?”

 

“No.”

 

Heechul stares at Donghae for a minute longer, then flicks a hand through his fringe in annoyance and sighs. “Hi, Yoeng-Ja, I’m Heechul. This is stupid, I’m talking to thin air.”

 

“Don’t worry about him. Do you think you can try? Just one light is all I need.”

 

Another second or two later, and the first LED begins to flicker weakly.

 

“Ah, good job! What about the second light? Can you get that one?”

 

The first one flickers again, but only briefly. The two of them wait in the silence. Just as Donghae is about to give up, thinking maybe she is just too weak to generate a signal, the lights flicker again - the first LED much more strongly than before, and the second LED as well.

 

“Okay, thank you. How about we play a game then? I’ll ask a question, and you can light up one for yes, two for no. Do you want to try?”

 

The first light flares. Donghae glances quickly at Heechul. The camera is still trained on the dresser, but Heechul’s expression is a little pinched.

 

“Yeong-Ja, how old are you? Are you older than ten?” It takes a moment, but two LEDs flare to life. “Older than five?” One. With couple more questions he determines that Yeong-Ja is eight, or was eight when she died.

 

“Does Ryeowook play nicely with you?” One light. “Ah, that’s good. Are you okay with us being here? Me and Heechul, and the others?” The longest pause yet passes, but the first LED does light up.

 

A moment of confusion follows for Donghae, a pulse of aggravation that doesn’t make sense given the spirit’s energy. But then Heechul says, “What is this proving?” and the edge to his voice gives him away. “They’re just lights. I mean, it’s cool, but you already assume there’s a ghost here, so why bother?”

 

“Don’t listen to Heechul,” Donghae says, “He doesn’t believe you’re real.”

 

He’s joking - he says it mostly for Heechul’s benefit. But the LEDs all light up at once for a brief moment, and even Heechul is left staring at them. For a moment, Donghae loses Yeoung-Ja altogether; her presence flickers like the lights and comes back weaker than before.

 

“You’re making her anxious,” he warns. “Tell her I’m wrong.”

 

“What?”

 

“Tell her you believe in her. It’s been a long time since she’s felt like her existence matters.”

Heechul huffs out a sigh, but complies. “Okay, you’re real, I’m sorry.”

 

It’s the worst excuse of an apology, but Donghae finds himself laughing into his shoulder. Incredibly, this strengthens Yeong-Ja, so he laughs even harder until even Heechul is cracking a bemused smile.

 

“Alright, Yeong-Ja, just a few more questions. Are you alone here?”

 

Two lights hold steady for nearly three seconds. No, she’s not alone. But Donghae knew that already. “Ryeowook says you have to hide sometimes.” Two lights. “Yeong-Ja, this other presence, does it use you? Does it make you tired?”

 

The single LED light shines in the darkness. The room is silent, and Yeong-Ja’s presence is slipping away from him by the second, but he has to ask. “Okay. One more question, I know you’re tired. Are you afraid?”

 

A pause - then machine goes crazy. All of the lights flicker on and off, then begin lighting up one-by-one and dimming again in quick succession until the pattern of lights becomes random, some bright and some dim, like an energy surge fizzling out. By the time the lights have all gone out and stay that way, the only presence Donghae can detect in the room is Heechul’s. They both stare at each other, Heechul’s eyes a little wide, which Donghae does not point out.

 

“Was that recording?” he asks quietly. Heechul checks the camcorder and nods.

 

“Okay,” Donghae says, checking his watch. “End of session, 1:14 AM.”

 

-

  
 

They trail through the dark hallways back to the kitchen, Leeteuk feeling a bit deflated as he follows Kangin’s footsteps. He’d be lying if he didn’t admit some part of him had been hoping they’d get all of this over with in one night. He’s tired of feeling this way in his own home, guilt pinning him down.

 

It’s brighter in the kitchen thanks to all the monitors and a lantern-style flashlight, which Leeteuk thinks might be throwing too many shadows on the walls, but they’re not monitoring the kitchen anyway. Kyuhyun’s eyes are glued to one of the screens, but Sungmin looks up as they enter, flashing them an encouraging smile.  

 

“Hyukjae hyung,” Kyuhyun says without looking up, “Looks like things are going well.”

 

“Session is still ongoing?” Hyukjae moves around the table to peer at the monitor Kyuhyun is watching.

 

“He’s getting some activity.”

 

Leeteuk shoots a look at Kangin, who meets his eye. He feels a bit of the weight lift from his shoulders.

 

“How are the kids?” Leeteuk directs the question at Sungmin.

 

“Haven’t heard a peep.”

 

“Is it alright if I check on them?”

 

Hyukjae nods, gesturing with a little shoo-ing motion. “We’re going to let Donghae finish the K2 session, go ahead. Tell them thanks for being so quiet.”

 

He agrees and then ducks into the hallway. The kids are in the office next door, hopefully asleep, but when he eases the door open and pokes his head inside, all four flashlights are on. Kibum sees him first, and he’s the only one to look abashed to be caught awake. Only Ryeowook is asleep, curled up beside Shindong’s folded legs. There’s a mess of mattresses and pillows in the center of the room, just like it had been in the common room when the whole family had been avoiding sleeping in separate bedrooms.

 

“You guys holding up okay?” Leeteuk asks, foregoing any scolding. He gets a couple of vague nods; Shindong and Yesung don’t even bother to look up, noses stuck in manhwa. There are more of the books scattered around. “Where did those come from?”

 

“Heechul hyung gave them to us,” Kibum says with a shrug. “They’re really cool.”

 

He comes fully into the room at that, bending to pick up one of the manhwa and glances quickly through the images. It looks safe, thank god, because who knows what kind of things Heechul might think are appropriate for children?

 

“Did you see any ghosts?” Shindong abandons his book in favor of staring at Leeteuk with huge eyes.

 

“No, we didn’t see any ghosts,” Leeteuk chuckles. Shindong actually seems disappointed, which strikes him as odd. He’d think that Shindong would be a little more afraid after what he had… experienced. Although that might be the exact reason he’s interested. Know thy enemy, and all that. Leeteuk takes a moment to feel proud. “I’ll let you all know if anything happens, don’t worry.”

 

“Donghae hyung can see ghosts, right?” Kibum asks.

 

“That’s why he’s here, yep.”

 

“Cool!”

 

He’s only known Donghae for a couple of days, but Leeteuk doesn’t think ‘cool’ is a way he would describe his clairvoyance. Still, he’s relieved that his kids are putting on a brave face; if nothing else, he can thank Donghae and Hyukjae for that.

 

Yesung turns to him, eyes like saucers, and says, “Can he read our minds?”

 

Leeteuk laughs a little too loudly at that and shakes his head, assuring Yesung that no, Donghae isn’t a mind reader. Although he does have to wonder about that himself, sometimes. Donghae has a way of looking at people like he can see right through them. More than once, Leeteuk has caught himself worrying if Donghae does know what’s going on inside his head. His reactions to what Leeteuk is feeling can be downright uncanny.

 

“Well, I just wanted to check in on you. Don’t - I mean, try to get some sleep tonight, okay?”

 

He gets a chorus of mumbled “Yeahhh”s in reply; he’d stopped himself just short of telling them not to stay up too late. He’s aware that they’re nervous, no matter how nonchalant they’re acting, and he can hardly blame them for not being able to sleep. Everyone’s going to be sleeping through most of the morning, anyway.

 

Back in the kitchen, everyone is still crowded around the monitors, muttering quietly. Hyukjae points at one of the screens and Kyuhyun says something Leeteuk doesn’t catch, but beside him, Sungmin yawns.

 

“Everything alright?” Kangin asks, sidling up beside him.

 

“They’re awake, but they’re doing fine. What’s going on here?” Leeteuk jerks his head toward the others.

 

“No idea, checking camera setup or something?”

 

They both turn at the sound of footsteps and Donghae enters the kitchen with a oddly quiet Heechul in tow.

 

“Hey,” says Hyukjae, standing from where he’s been leaning over Kyuhyun’s shoulder. “How’d it go?”

 

“It went well. Yeong-Ja was very cooperative, and had a lot more energy than I expected.”

 

Leeteuk’s thoughts are still forming around that - Yeong-Ja, whom he had previously assumed to be Ryeowook’s imaginary friend, being talked about like she’s as real as any of them; it’s not that he doesn’t believe Donghae - not after all he’s seen in the past few weeks - but it’s a lot to take in. He doesn’t have a chance to let the idea of it settle before Heechul is interrupting his thoughts.

 

“Yeah, we had a nice chat with the nightstand.” He smirks, but the room grows silent. Donghae blinks at him, unfazed, and it dims the strength of Heechul’s smirk.

 

“She confirmed the second presence,” Donghae tells Hyukjae, and everyone seems to take that as a cue to ignore Heechul. The creak of the fridge being shut draws Leeteuk’s attention to where Kangin must have paused while browsing for a late-night refresher, probably waiting to see if he needs to kick Heechul out or not. He catches Leeteuk’s eye and Leeteuk shrugs.

 

“She tries to hide from it,” Donghae is saying, “and she’s scared.”

 

Something passes between him and Hyukjae then, a silent conversation that Leeteuk can’t translate.

 

“So it worked? We have proof?” Kangin interjects, and Leeteuk wishes he were still standing beside him so he could step on his foot.

 

Donghae is shaking his head. “It’s not the proof we need. It has to be undeniable, and it has to come from the demonic presence itself.”

 

“Basically, nobody’s going to believe some flashing lights.”

 

“I’ll show you flashing lights,” Kyuhyun mutters darkly from his place at the table. Heechul turns to him, mouth open in retort, but Leeteuk cuts him off before he can make things worse.

 

“Kim Heechul, if you can’t take this seriously - “

 

“He’s fine.”

 

Leeteuk snaps his mouth shut, turning to Donghae. One of his hands is on Hyukjae’s elbow, seemingly holding him back; Leeteuk can see the muscles work in his jaw.. “He’s a good control. Kyuhyun, please don’t bait him?”

 

Kyuhyun just snorts, but Heechul flops down at the table with a put-upon sigh. “Maybe it was a big coincidence how that thing blinked at us at just the right moments. Maybe not. But Donghae already told me you can’t prove it either way.”

 

“I did tell him that,” Donghae says, blinking. “The K2 meter isn’t reliable enough to act as proof. If Yeong-Ja were here on her own, you wouldn’t even know about her, she wouldn’t be a problem. She’s only this strong because she’s being used by the demon.”

 

“So it’s a demon for sure,” Leeteuk has to ask, pulse feeling sluggish.

 

Donghae gives him one of those long looks, the kind that makes Leeteuk wish he could put all of his secrets behind a locked door. “Yes,” he says firmly. “We need proof. It needs to be taken care of now.”

 

“Infestation,” Hyukjae adds, and then to Donghae he says: “I think we should bait it.”

 

“Tonight?”

 

“No point in waiting.”

 

“Okay, woah, what are we doing?” Kangin asks, watching Hyukjae cross the room to where they’d stashed their bags of equipment and start to rifle through them.

 

“I haven’t.. we haven’t gotten any sign of the other presence tonight aside from Yeong-Ja. We’re going to have to make this thing angry, try and draw it out.” Donghae supplies.

 

He feels vaguely unsettled every time Yeong-Ja’s name is mentioned, but Leeteuk isn’t sure why. It’s probably guilt for assuming she wasn’t real, but … he taps impatiently at the side of his thigh, watching Hyukjae return with a handful of things that look an awful lot like crucifixes. He shoves something into his pocket, then hands Kangin a simple chain with a small pendant on the end. Then he hands one out to Leeteuk, who takes it and examines the pendant. It’s a small circular medallion with the image of someone he wouldn’t be able to name on one side, a cross on the other, and scattered words in what must be Latin. Kangin drapes his around his neck, but Leeteuk finds himself biting at his cheeks in discomfort. He drops the chain and medallion into his back pocket instead.

 

“Those medallions will either protect you guys or piss it off even more,” Hyukjae says wryly, “I’m sorry that I can’t promise it either way.”

 

He doesn’t give anything to Donghae, but Leeteuk notices the small beads of a rosary wrapped around his hand and wrist. He’d noticed them trailing out of his pocket earlier, but now Donghae bears it like a bracelet.

 

It hits him suddenly: why Yeong-Ja makes him feel wrong-footed; off-balance. “How long has she been here?” he asks without thinking, and even Kyuhyun looks up from the computer to look at him. “What happened to her?”

 

“I don’t know,” says Donghae after a moment of silence, and Hyukjae mutters, “Nothing good.”

 

“She said she was afraid,” Heechul pipes in. The stares turn in his direction, and slowly Heechul realizes that he’s just treated the situation like it’s real after all. He scowls, then returns to tapping at his phone like he’d been doing for the past five minutes.

 

“If I had to guess, I’d say she’s been here since around the turn of the century. It’s most likely that when renovations started on this house, activity kicked up. It’s possible that she died of illness, of course, but anything demonic in nature needs a way in, and the door’s normally opened through tragedy.” Donghae sounds like he’s reading out of a textbook; Leeteuk imagines it’s a pretty good way of distancing himself from the situation. He wishes he could do the same. “When something terrible happens, it leaves a wound. The demon here was most likely attracted to it, and Yeong-Ja was easy to exploit.”

 

“What happens if we get rid of it?”

 

“Freedom.” The word sounds so light when Hyukjae says it. Freedom.

 

“So we provoke it, get evidence, then what? You guys exorcise it?” Kangin asks.

 

“Not us, no. Only priests can exorcise it, and only one unordained person has ever been given permission to perform an exorcism. And, no, that’s not us,” Hyukjae says with a laugh. “But we’ve got an ordained friend on stand-by who normally does exorcisms for us. As soon as we get approval from the vatican we’re good to go. But we need evidence first. And so: we make it angry.” He hefts a wooden crucifix for emphasis, and he looks way too eager for Leeteuk’s tastes.

 

“Did you take readings of the common room?” Donghae asks, and Hyukjae deflates a little.

 

“No, you’re right, we should do that first. Kangin, Leeteuk, maybe you two can get readings of the perimeter hallway? Heechul, you can join us if you want.”

 

“Hm?” Heechul doesn’t look up from his phone. “Oh, nah, just get me when the good stuff starts.”

 

Hyukjae shrugs and Leeteuk goes to collect the EMF reader they’d been using earlier. It’s nearing 2 am now and he wants to get this over with. He steadily ignores his nerves. Success means seeing things he isn’t sure he’s willing to see again, but he thinks about his kids all huddled up in the next room over, and follows Kangin back out into the hallway.

 

-

  
 

“The numbers are fine.” Hyukjae’s holding the device above his head, as if he’ll be able to find pockets of higher EMF around the room if he just looks hard enough, but it’s fluctuating between a low point 4 and point 5 milligauss.

 

Donghae shrugs. “It’s not active. It’s just in this room. Background hum.” He’d felt something the moment they stepped into the common room, the same faint signature that’s been setting him off since they first arrived to this house. He almost wishes he hadn’t mentioned it now that Hyukjae’s feeling frustrated at not being able to measure it, but... it’s necessary. Donghae wishes there were numbers he could assign to what he feels, some system  that science could explain or that Hyukjae could better understand. But there’s no real way to describe why Donghae feels uneasy in the common room; it’s not a clear sense of anything paranormal, it’s just a wrongness. He wants to shake it off like water.

 

Hyukjae places the EMF reader gently on the table in front of the couch alongside the audio recorder and handheld camera. His fingers hover over the recorder for a moment as if he’s going to… Donghae isn’t sure; shut it off, maybe? He has blocked Hyukjae’s energy out entirely, as it’s been too hard to concentrate around the gentle hum of anxiety he’s been carrying around all night. Hyukjae glances back at him, then moves away from the recorder and picks up the camera instead.

 

Not every conversation is good to have on tape. Kyuhyun listens to nearly all of them, and if anything paranormal picks up in the background... well, they can have important conversations later. Hyukjae holds the camera out to Donghae like a question, and Donghae takes it with a smile, mouthing I’m okay as he does. Hyukjae just nods.

 

“We’re all finished,” comes Kangin’s voice from behind them. Donghae looks over his shoulder and sees Leeteuk walking in behind him, still looking a bit pale, but steady.

 

“Anything interesting?” Hyukjae asks.

 

“Nah. Anything in here?”

 

“Nothing we can measure.” Hyukjae makes a vague hand-wave in Donghae’s direction and the others just nod.

 

Donghae blocks their energies out too. He fiddles with the camera, making extra certain that the battery is full and there’s plenty of data left on the card even though Kyuhyun had double-checked all the equipment before they even started. He glances up briefly when Heechul sidles into the room, but lets Hyukjae handle the reminders for him to just watch if he can. Donghae isn’t worried. Kim Heechul is not on his list of things to worry about tonight.

 

Hyukjae sets the crucifixes around the room. Donghae follows him with the camcorder, documenting their placement so they can verify later on whether or not they get moved around during the session. He takes a moment to scan the room, proof of who is with them and where everyone is standing, and finally sets himself apart from the group so that he can easily monitor the room with the camera. Hyukjae squares his shoulders and Donghae unconsciously makes a tighter loop in the rosary he’s got wrapped around his hand.

 

“Common room, 2:04 a.m.,” Hyukjae starts. “Donghae is video recording. Separate running audio for this room can be linked to this timestamp. Also present are myself, Hyukjae; Leeteuk, Kangin, and Heechul. Provocation.”

 

Hyukjae glances back over his shoulder, which Donghae sees through the camcorder’s display. He gestures with his free hand for Hyukjae to continue.

 

“We know you’re here,” he starts in an icy voice. “And we know you’re hiding, but hey, we don’t blame you. You sure as hell picked the wrong family.”

 

Donghae doesn’t like this part. Not because of anything paranormal or demonic, at this point in his life there isn’t much that can truly unsettle him beyond… beyond what he’s already experienced. He just doesn’t like the cold, mocking tone Hyukjae uses in this kind of situation. It’s not fake - he’s not putting on a show. It’s more like he’s willing to let his mouth run him straight into danger just to get a response. To push back.

 

“Kind of a waste of our time, right Hae?” Hyukjae continues. He doesn’t expect a response from Donghae and he doesn’t get one. “We come all the way out here and the damn thing is afraid of us. Afraid of what he can’t win. Ashamed.”

 

The others are practically holding their breath - even Hyukjae seems to be, during the pauses in his words - but there’s no response.

 

“We’ve dealt with your kind before. You know that, right? Listen, just give it up. How low are you in the order? Fifth? Lower? Looks like you’re going to have to make a choice. Who are you more afraid of? Your filthy friends, or the Father?”

 

Donghae glances quickly at the crucifixes on the mantle; usually mentioning a deity will get some response, even the involuntary kind, but nothing happens. He’s getting nothing. Kangin makes no indication that the EMF readings have gone up, so he doesn’t have much hope for any of the other equipment. Donghae watches the screen on his video camera, zoning out for a minute. Hyukjae is making small steps around the room and longer pauses in between his questions; a brief flicker in the shadows beyond the far entryway drags Donghae’s attention away from him.

 

He looks up over the camera’s screen and squints out into the hall, trying to decide if he’d actually seen something or if his tired eyes are messing with him. Well, if anything, the camera caught it.

 

On the tail end of Hyukjae’s next question, he hears it - laughter. He holds his breath, waiting. Nobody else reacts to the sound. Then it happens again. It’s unmistakably a giggle, high-pitched like a child’s voice, and the moment he realizes this, Donghae drops all of his filters. Heechul’s boredom and Kangin’s curiosity are easily pushed aside; Leeteuk’s anxiety is a bit harder. Hyukjae’s energy is just screaming at him like it always does when they’re in the field, but it’s still familiar enough that he doesn’t have to work hard at pushing that do the back of his head. And, yes, there beneath everyone in the room, fluttering and weak, he recognizes Yeong-Ja.

 

“Hyukjae,” he says lowly, feeling all eyes turn to him. “It’s the child.”

 

Hyukjae doesn’t miss a beat. “Who forgot to tell me we were playing hide and seek? Are you hiding well?”

 

Donghae has to bite his lip to keep himself from smiling. The tone of his voice had changed from mocking and bitter to a higher, more playful tone in an instant, and the whole atmosphere is lighter for it. It’s exactly how Hyukjae sounds when playing around with a giggly Ara, and it seems to be working. Yeong-Ja’s presence is even stronger than before.

 

“Listen, Yeong-Ja, the safe house is in here, okay? Do you think you can reach it before I find you?”

 

And there it is again, the flash of movement in the shadows of the entryway. It’s followed up by the sound of small feet running down the hall; Donghae turns his attention to the east side entryway and his heart leaps into his throat: she runs past. Taller than he expected, but still small and slight, long braided hair flopping against her back as she disappears from sight.

 

Quickly, he turns to the next entryway. He can still hear her giggles, but nothing passes through the corridor. Donghae hurries over and peers around the frame into the dark, empty passage. He thinks a bit dumbly about how much she looked like a ghost, the flash of white skirt and white socked feet in his memory of her.

 

“Did you see her?” Hyukjae asks. When Donghae turns back around, four sets of eyes are staring at him.

 

“Yeah. Just the once.”

 

“Did you get it on camera?”

 

Donghae looks down. The camera is still in his hand, but he realizes with a sinking feeling that he hadn’t even remembered it was there. “Um. Maybe?”

 

“Okay, that’s okay. Is she still here?”

 

She is here somewhere, so Donghae nods even though he doubts she’ll have enough energy to manifest again. He raises the camera and trains it once again on Hyukjae, who continues his line of questioning.

 

“How much time do I have left? Hey, Donghae’s not playing, you know. You can still tag the safe house. Want to try?”

 

A light blinks on the viewfinder. Donghae has only a moment to comprehend that his battery life is suddenly down to a quarter full and then it’s full again - there’s a frantic beeping sound from across the room where Kangin is holding the EMF meter - the camera’s light shines brighter until it goes out with a small pop - the low battery warning sounds off, one long high pitched note. The little red symbol flashes once, twice - and then the camera dies completely.

 

“Shit,” Donghae mutters at the same time as he hears Kyuhyun call out from the kitchen.

 

In a few moments Kyuhyun is standing in the doorway, his urgent voice saying, “It’s all shut down, the power is completely drained.”

 

“What’s going on?” asks Kangin as Hyukjae turns, grim-faced, to meet Donghae’s eyes.

 

Before he has the chance to respond, there is a sudden, searing pain on the heel of his left hand - it’s the little metal crucifix of the rosary he’s had twisted up in his fingers and wrist, red-hot where it rests against the skin. He curses more loudly this time, nearly dropping the camera in his other hand, but he manages to untangle the rosary enough that the crucifix drops clear of his skin. Thrusting the camera at Hyukjae, Donghae drops the rest of the rosary to the floor, hissing as the wound already begins to blister.

 

“Kyuhyun, check on the kids,” Hyukjae says in a remarkably steady voice, holding Donghae gingerly by the wrist to examine the wound. Donghae assumes Kyuhyun follows directions, but he’s a little distracted by the pain and the distant, ashy feeling of whatever presence has decided to make itself known. He feels so stupid because of course, of course, he should have known: Yeong-Ja had exhausted herself earlier, it wouldn’t make sense for her to be able to manifest if she weren’t being amplified by the damn thing they were trying to provoke in the first place. There comes a thump and rattle from the other side of the room, making them both look up.

 

Leeteuk has bumped into the low table, knocking the recording devices off the edge. “What’s happened?” he says, an edge of panic in his voice, arms outstretched. Donghae can’t really comprehend what the issue is. The air in the room seems thin and he realizes that he’s shivering, the skin on his palm still stinging and even the healthy skin around the wound is sensitive to Hyukjae’s gentle fingers. He pulls out of his grasp unsteadily. Across the way, Kangin has grabbed onto Leeteuk’s outstretched arms and Leeteuk is struggling, a complete, hysteric panic in his voice as he continues to ask what’s going on, why can’t he see, what’s that sound.. ? His energy is loud, pushing through Donghae’s filter, outright panic and a strange, static interruption that is making his head hurt and his senses tangled up to the point that he can’t tell if his actual sight is blurry or if he’s confusing that kind of vision with his other -

 

The overhead lights flick on.

 

Everything comes to a complete stop. Even Leeteuk calms and stops fighting Kangin’s hold; Donghae feels warm again, the oppressive constriction of his skin gone so suddenly that he’s only aware it had been happening until he could breathe. Heechul is staring at them all with wide eyes from the east wall, hand still on the lightswitch.

 

A moment’s pause as everybody takes stock of the situation.The pain in Donghae’s hand throbs to the beat of his pulse.

 

“I’m calling it a night,” says Hyukjae. Nobody argues.

 

-

  
 

Hyukjae is absolutely wide awake, despite the exhaustion he seems to feel in his bones. They’re silent as they leave the common room, Heechul wandering off towards the office to be with the kids when he notices Kyuhyun has left. Hyukjae is the last to file into the kitchen, right behind Donghae, and immediately he steers the other toward the sink. He turns on the cold water tap for him and Donghae gingerly holds his burned hand under the faucet.

 

“They’re all fine,” Kyuhyun is reassuring the others, “Three of them are asleep and the older kid said he heard us, but is okay.”

 

Kangin nods and thanks him, but Leeteuk is pale and withdrawn.

 

“Kyu, are we back online?” Hyukjae asks as he leans against the sink.

 

Kyuhyun is already back behind the monitors, leaning across Sungmin to click around on the computers. “Power’s back, yeah. I’ll check the camera you guys had in there; Sungmin, can you see if any of the cameras in the other rooms stopped recording?”

 

Donghae turns off the tap, still holding his palm flat. Hyukjae idly wonders where the rosary went. Donghae must have dropped it back there. They’ll have to get Siwon to take a look, see if it’s worth cleansing or if it gets locked up.

 

Tugging gently on Donghae’s sleeve, he leads him to the bench on the empty side of the table; he sits easily at the slightest pressure from Hyukjae on his shoulders.

  
  
 

“Leeteuk, what about you? You okay?” Hyukjae asks, simultaneously lifting Donghae’s hand to get a better look at the burn. Donghae shakes his head slightly, probably answering the question in Leeteuk’s stead.

 

“Jungsoo-ya, what happened in there?” Kangin asks lowly.

 

The palm of Donghae’s hand had blistered so quickly, the patch of red skin is outlined in the shape of the crucifix. He tries not to think of it too hard, setting his teeth against the moment of anger that wells up in his chest. “I’ll get the first-aid kit,” he murmurs. Donghae shoots him a small, distracted smile in response.

 

“I - it didn’t… happen to you? Nobody else?” Leeteuk is saying. Hyukjae rifles through the bags until he finds the large kit, trying to remember how to treat burns. They should have gotten water on it sooner, but they were kind of distracted.

 

“No, it didn’t.” Hyukjae catches sight of Kangin’s expression when he walks back around the table; it probably mirrors his own.

 

“I couldn’t see,” Leeteuk explains. “I didn’t hear anything either. It really didn’t happen to anyone else?”

 

“The lights were already out, Teuk, all the cameras went dead and you started to panic, that was it.”

 

From the look on Donghae’s face, that’s not all that happened, but he stays quiet about it so Hyukjae doesn’t mention. He lifts Donghae’s hand by the wrist, noting that it’s shaking slightly. He tries to be as gentle as he can and dabs aloe against the shiny, red skin, but he can feel slight resistance as Donghae fights to stay still.

 

“Donghae saw the little girl, I remember that, but then… something... I don’t know. It was cold and I couldn’t see and it felt.. felt…”

 

He stops trying to explain, just goes quiet, and in the corner of his eye Hyukjae can see Kangin hovering close. He gives them a moment, returning his focus to Donghae.

 

“Relax, Hyuk,” Donghae says quietly. Hyukjae huffs out a sigh. He thought he’d been acting pretty calm. Sometimes he wishes it were actually possible to hide his feelings - for Donghae’s sake, if not his own.

 

“It wasn’t targeted at me,” Donghae goes on, “the crucifix was an easy target. It could have been anybody.”

 

Hyukjae switches out the aloe for burn cream. “Sure, but it happened to you this time.”

 

Donghae just sighs quietly. Kyuhyun announces that everything seems to be in order, the only time lost was less than two minutes. Everything before the power outage is in tact, which Hyukjae is grateful for, but they can worry about what footage was caught in the common room later.

 

“Someone explain this to me,” Kangin says. “One second we’re looking for the little girl, who is supposed to be harmless, and then all of this happened. What was that?”

 

“It was proving itself,” Hyukjae interrupts, guilt washing over him and then away. He can’t dwell on that. He can’t blame himself for what the damn thing does. But he can still worry about Leeteuk, he can still be angry that all of Donghae’s concentration right now seems to be focused on not snatching his hand back or hissing through his teeth in pain. “And no, that’s not what we expected to happen. It used Yeong-Ja for strength and… posturing. That’s all it was doing. Proving that it’s not weak and not willing to go anywhere.”

 

The burn only needs a loose dressing, but it still takes longer than it should. He’s probably more careful than he needs to be, wrapping gauze loosely to protect the blisters. The cream must have helped a little, because Donghae stops flinching at the feather-light touches. Hyukjae tapes it closed at the wrist. Donghae lowers it to his lap, still unwilling to curl his hand closed.

 

“Thank you, Hyukjae,” he says quietly. Hyukjae brushes away his fringe and presses a kiss onto his forehead.

 

“This worked then, right?” Kangin sounds hopeful. “If that was caught on camera, it should be enough proof?”

 

“Personal experiences aren’t proof enough, and if we managed to catch Yeong-Ja’s manifestation it’s only evidence of her. Not of the demon. What we need is evidence that it’s negatively affecting humans.”

 

“And Leeteuk’s experience just now doesn’t count? What about his hand?” Kangin gestures to Donghae, but he’s hardly paying attention at this point and doesn’t respond, idly playing with the edges of the gauze wrap.

 

“We’ll send the footage along to strengthen our argument, but honestly, I don’t think it’s going to be enough. We know now that it’s not shy about stealing energy when it needs to, but it did take all the equipment, heat from the air, and what was left of Yeong-Ja’s strength to do what it did tonight.”

 

“So, instead of the girl, we need the demon to manifest?”

 

“It just did. We don’t see demons physically. Not even Donghae sees them physically. What we need is a clear indication that it’s not going to stop here, that it intends to use more than just a little girl’s spirit.”

 

“Where is she now, do you think?” Leeteuk pipes in, looking like he’s finally collected himself. “Yeong-Ja?”

 

Hyukjae shrugs. “Back to wherever she goes when she wants to hide, I guess.”

 

“Like hide and seek.”

 

Hyukjae nods. A game of hide and seek she probably desperately wants to win. Not likely a physical place, but caught somewhere in between. He and Donghae have seen a lot of things, but never an in between.

 

Well, he thinks, looking down at Donghae and his far-away gaze, maybe Donghae has seen it after all.

 

“She goes wherever she feels the safest, but that place is usually also at the center of activity. It’s more accessible to her, but the demon has likely found a way to exploit that.” He pauses, uncertain.“The heart of the house.”

 

“Is that the common room, then?”

 

Hyukjae considers what just happened in there along with the way Donghae has been insisting that there’s unmeasurable activity going on, and he’s about to tell Kangin that he’s probably correct, but Donghae speaks first. He’s surprised that he’d been even listening. He speaks quietly, but clearly.

 

“This house has many hearts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three things:
> 
> 1\. The only non-ordained person given permission from the Vatican to perform an exorcism was, of course, Ed Warren.
> 
> 2\. The last line is an homage to my most favoritest paranormal movie, guess which!
> 
> 3\. There's a song title reference in here and if anyone catches it, you get alll the brownie points in the land~


	7. Chapter 7

The sun hasn’t even begun to lighten the sky when Leeteuk steps through the quiet halls, having given up on sleep entirely. He understands why Donghae and Hyukjae would want them sleeping in their bedroom to monitor any overnight activity, but he wishes he could have joined the kids in the office, all huddled together for comfort. He peeks in to check on them briefly, but he wants to make sure they sleep as long as possible through the morning, so he doesn’t even move inside to turn off the flashlights they’d left on and continues into the kitchen.

 

He’s only mildly surprised to see Donghae sitting behind the monitors, face lit by the glow of the screens.

 

“Morning,” Leeteuk greets, quietly so as not to startle him. Truth be told, he doesn’t want to ruin the comfort of the kitchen, dark and still with the low hum of computers and equipment to keep it from being eerie. Donghae doesn’t startle, lowering his headphones around his neck and smiling back. “Can’t sleep?”

 

He shakes his head in affirmation, mouth pressed into a rueful smile. “I sent Kyuhyun to get some rest.”

 

Leeteuk nods. “You want some coffee?”

 

“Sure, thank you.”

 

He’s as quiet as he can be with the coffee maker, although there’s nothing he can do about the hiss it makes as the water starts to boil. He watches it drip into the pot, feeling exhausted, the sound of Donghae clicking around on the computer enough to lull him into a haze.

 

Leeteuk shakes himself out of it. Drifting thoughts tend to lead him to places he doesn’t want them to go nowadays.

 

The light in the room has changed to gray when he turns around to carry a coffee mug over to the table. It will be a while yet before there’s much light in the room, the trees surrounding the property filtering out sunrise until it rises above the canopy. Leeteuk sets Donghae’s mug beside his elbow. “Everything okay out there?”

 

“It’s pretty calm now.” He clicks a button and one of the monitors switches its view from the hallway to the common room. Leeteuk notices two things at once: first, that Donghae must have seen him coming down the hallway before he entered the kitchen, since the monitor had been displaying that corridor’s camera a moment ago; and second, that the common room is a mess. The furniture itself seems slightly skewed, and on the floor beneath the mantle, all of the crucifixes that Hyukjae had set up are now on the floor. “I’ll have to check the footage from last night, but I think that happened while we were in there. I didn’t really notice at the time.”

 

Donghae gestures at the screen with his left hand as he says it, the one wrapped in a bandage.

“Oh,” Leeteuk says, remembering. “How does it feel?”

 

Donghae brings the hand to his chest reflexively, then lowers it into his lap. “It’s okay as long as I don’t try to move my fingers. Or put any pressure on it.” He reaches for the coffee cup with his good hand.

 

“Is that why you couldn’t sleep?” Leeteuk asks, sitting down beside him and cupping his own hands around his warm mug.

 

Donghae shrugs. After taking a sip, he says, “Mostly,” and leaves it at that.

 

They drink their coffee in silence, both of them glancing at the monitors, but everything is still and silent. Every now and then Donghae clicks the view over to the camera that’s in the office, but doesn’t linger there, probably for the sake of privacy. He never once switches to the camera in Leeteuk and Kangin’s bedroom, the one that Kangin is still sleeping in at this very moment.

 

Eventually, Donghae stands, collecting his mug and reaching over for Leeteuk’s empty mug as well and carries them over to the counter.

 

“Let me - “ Leeteuk protests, but Donghae just laughs and shakes his head.

 

“I’m fine, it’s not my dominant hand.” He pours Leeteuk another cup, but rinses his own out in the sink. “Will you watch the monitors if I head back to bed?”

 

“Of course. Thank you,” he adds as Donghae sets the refilled mug in front of him on the table.

 

“Unless you were planning on trying for sleep again?”

 

“No, I think I’ll try to nap in the afternoon, maybe.”

 

“Yeah.” Donghae grins. “Don’t tell Hyukjae I was in here, please? I don’t want him to worry.”

 

He promises not to say anything. Leeteuk knows that Kangin will worry too, but also that he didn’t want either of them sleeping in that room in the first place, so Leeteuk being safe in the kitchen instead and nearby the kids is probably going to win out over any concern.

 

Donghae leaves and Leeteuk watches the camera as he heads down the north wing corridor, where he and Hyukjae are staying in the master bedroom. He continues watching the still and silent cameras, but when even the coffee aroma isn’t enough to keep his attention, he gets up to start breakfast.

 

By the time Kangin wakes up, Leeteuk is just spooning warm rice out of the cooker, the last thing he needed to prepare. Kangin, whose eyes are still half glued shut with sleep, heads straight for the coffeepot. He pours a cup and then detours to the table where Leeteuk is setting down the warm bowl.

 

“Did you sleep at all?” he murmurs, leaning in to press his lips against Leeteuk’s forehead. Leeteuk shrugs.

 

“Not much. I’ll sleep after breakfast, I think, when the kids are up.” When the house is loud and the sun is bright.

 

Kangin just hmms, and Leeteuk doesn’t let him back away, choosing instead to lean his weight into Kangin’s body for a second. He closes his eyes but his head is still buzzing. He tries to shush it, tries to focus on the warmth of Kangin’s arm when it settles around his waist. It doesn’t really work. Then again, the two cups of coffee he had aren’t going to let him relax for a while yet.

 

His eyes open again when Kangin moves his arm and takes a small step back, and Leeteuk glances to the doorway and sees Hyukjae shuffle in, yawning hugely and attempting to flatten his hair. Donghae is a step behind. He catches Leeteuk’s eye and nods just slightly, an acknowledgement of their shared early morning. Hyukjae looks untroubled, eyes widening at all the food on the table, so Leeteuk assumes that Donghae’s innocent ruse had been a success.

 

“When did you have time to make all this?” Hyukjae asks, and judging by the way he doesn’t take his eyes off the table while he says it, it’s probably rhetorical.

 

He’s saved from answering anyway by Sungmin, who enters the room with eyes still swollen from sleep but wearing a smile, bowing lightly to Hyukjae and Donghae.

 

“Good morning,” Hyukjae says, grabbing a plate. He pauses in the middle of passing a plate to Donghae, frowning slightly. “Did Kyuhyun go to bed?”

 

“Ah.” Leeteuk rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t sleep well, so I told him I’d watch the monitors if he wanted to head off to bed,” he explains, although it was Donghae who had dismissed Kyuhyun, but he doesn’t mention that. “And… shit, I didn’t really watch them while I was cooking. Sorry.”

 

“‘S okay,” Hyukjae says, circling around the table to get at the monitors. “We’ll spend most of the day going over the footage from last night anyway.”

 

“Sungmin, are the rest of the kids awake yet?”

 

“I just checked, Kibum and Shindong are awake. They’re all curled up like kittens in there,” he says, which makes Leeteuk smile.

 

Kangin skirts around the table, heading out the door. “I’ll go see if they want breakfast.”

“As if anything on this earth could keep them away from food,” Sungmin mutters sarcastically, giving Leeteuk a tired smile.

 

It’s not looking like anyone had a proper night’s sleep, but really, that’s been the norm around this household for too long now. Leeteuk reaches for a boiled egg, watching the others fill up their plates. Hopefully there will only be one more night of this, and then they can all just sleep away the rest of the summer in peace.

 

“We left a mess in the common room,” Hyukjae remarks, pointing to one of the screens. Leeteuk shuffles over to glance over his shoulder, feeling awkward because he knows exactly what he’ll see: the mess that had been left in that room ,which he and Donghae had already noticed some hours ago. Donghae makes a low, thoughtful hum and then takes a long swallow out of his water glass. He doesn’t see it, but Leeteuk notices Hyukjae glance askance at Donghae with confusion wrinkling the skin between his brows.

 

Hyukjae opens his mouth to speak again but then Kangin comes back into the kitchen, escorted by their children, who barely have time for a ‘good morning’ before swarming the table. Kyuhyun appears a minute or so later, glaring against the sunlight that’s now bright within the room, looking like he hasn’t slept half as much as he wishes.

 

And then Heechul appears. “What is wrong with you lunatics, don’t you realize that it’s only eight in the morning?” he snaps, and there’s a momentary pause of conversation in which only the clink of spoons and the sounds of chewing can be heard. In that space of time, Leeteuk wonders again whether telling Heechul about the paranormal investigation was a good idea, but then Heechul says, “Oh my god, look at all this food!”

 

The mood returns, and it’s exactly what Leeteuk had needed. Noise and light and a full kitchen. Heechul telling Kangin some outrageous story (while Kangin interjects his commentary about how Heechul’s story probably actually went, instead of his exaggeration); Yesung and Shindong squabbling over their food while Sungmin attempts to mediate; Ryeowook sitting quietly on Donghae’s lap while he cuts leftover pork into smaller bites for him; Hyukjae still at the monitors and pretending not to notice.  

 

It’s good, it’s easy. Last night seems like a spectre, a bad dream, and the morning passes quickly. The children run off to play outdoors, dispersing to lord only knows where, but Leeteuk knows they’re safer outside than in so he doesn’t mind. Kyuhyun’s the one who volunteers to clean the common room, Sungmin following behind him with a thousand questions on his tongue. Soon only the adults are left in the room. Donghae pours what’s left of the coffee into a mug and then insists on cleaning the carafe, a shadow-play of what had happened when he and Leeteuk had had their first cups in the early hours of the morning.

 

“Thank you for breakfast,” he says, “and for the coffee.” The corners of his mouth turn up into a casual smile, but the pointed look he’s sending Leeteuk is unmistakeable. He’s actually thanking him for keeping their secret.

 

Hyukjae thanks him too, standing up from his place at the table. “We’ll help you clean up, it’s the least we can do.”

 

“No no, you’re helping enough just being here,” Leeteuk insists.

 

Heechul, from where he’s sitting at the table, scrolling the screen of his phone with a lazy finger, says, “Jungsoo thinks we’re all his children and needs to clean up after us, just take the charity.”

 

Kangin laughs, covering his mouth with his hand and Leeteuk would be lying if he said he wasn’t pleased.

 

“It’s a tactic,” Kangin says. “He’ll do everything by himself until you feel so bad, you start cleaning dishes and doing laundry before he can convince you not to. That’s why we have five kids who will clean their rooms without being nagged.”

 

“Stop giving away my parenting secrets,” Leeteuk jokes, feeling the tips of his ears turn red.

 

“I’ll have to remember that one. When Ara is older she’ll be no match for Donghae’s puppy eyes.”

 

Donghae smiles, closed-mouthed and sly. “Works pretty well with you so far.”

 

Hyukjae sighs audibly.

 

“Okay,” Heechul says abruptly, “I’m out. If I’m going to be stuck with all of you tonight, I’m not sleeping in my clothes again. I’ll be back later.”

 

“If you’re going out, can you pick up some chicken for dinner?” Leeteuk asks before Heechul is out the door.

 

“Do I look like I’m a manager?”

 

“Please?”

 

“No,” Heechul says with finality, stalking out of the room. Nobody mentions that he’s not actually stuck with them tonight, since he more or less invited himself, but Leeteuk knows he’ll be back, and he’ll most likely have the chicken with him, too.

 

So the room is quiet again, especially after Donghae and Hyukjae decide to get some fresh air for themselves, and then it’s just Leeteuk and Kangin quietly cleaning up the breakfast dishes. It’s almost, almost, normal.

 

“What’s up with those two?” Kangin asks, placing leftovers into the fridge. “Something seems off.”

 

“Ah, you noticed that? I don’t really know. Donghae was awake before I was, though. He made me promise not to tell Hyukjae that he’d woken up so early. I think it happens often.”

 

“Hm. I bet he gets tired, ghost-whispering and mind reading and stuff.”

 

“Youngwoon-ah, you know that’s not how it works,” Leeteuk softly chides. From where he stands in front of the kitchen sink, he can see out the window to the yard, where the pair in question have gone to have some privacy. He’s trying not to watch, but he doesn’t think it’s anything more serious than lazy morning talk, if their easy expressions are anything to go by.

 

“You can’t tell me you don’t think he can read your mind.”

 

Leeteuk chuckles. “You should have come to that seminar the other day. The way they explain it… well, you’ve seen what they do.”

 

Kangin sets a stack of dishes next to him at the sink, stealing a rag to clean the table with. After a moment of silence, he says thoughtfully,“You think it’s real? I mean, the  - After last night not even Heechul can deny this stuff exists. But you think Donghae can really sense it?”

 

Leeteuk shrugs. The answer is simple. “Yes.”

 

He glances out the window again, absent-mindedly rinsing the dishes and settling them into the drying rack. Outside, Hyukjae says something that Leeteuk can’t hear, but he can see his mouth move. A moment later, Donghae bursts into laughter. The sound carries into the house, muffled, Donghae bent nearly double and holding onto Hyukjae’s arm with one hand, balancing his coffee mug in the other. Hyukjae says something else, a smile set into his lips, and this makes Donghae push him away, laughing again. Some coffee sloshes over the side of Donghae’s mug but he hardly seems to notice. Hyukjae shakes his head like Donghae is being ridiculous, but he’s still smiling, eyes never leaving the side of Donghae’s face, who doesn’t seem to notice.

 

“Still, he must be exhausted. It’s hard enough being in this house without a sixth-sense.”

 

Leeteuk wonders if that’s what they’re normally like. All he’s seen of them have been at investigation work. What must he and his family look like to them, then? There was a little more normalcy this morning, but how often to Donghae and Hyukjae deal with people who are terrified or in mourning? It probably does weigh on them. He has to wonder about that particular look that Donghae gets, the one that reminds him of some people he’d known in the army, the ones who’d seen a little too much action for peacetime.

 

“...Teuk?”

 

Belatedly, he realizes that Kangin had spoken some minutes ago. He comes to stand at his elbow, reaching across Leeteuk to turn off the running faucet. “Sorry,” Leeteuk says, gesturing out the window.

 

“Ah, why are you spying on people, old man,” Kangin jokes, rapping his knuckles on the window to get the attention of the two out in the yard. They both look, traces of amusement still on their faces. Hyukjae waves and Donghae’s eyes lift up to a smile, and they both turn towards the sliding patio doors to head back inside.

 

Kyuhyun beats them back to the kicthen, Sungmin in tow, and they’re carrying a small collection of recording devices. Hyukjae and Donghae follow soon after.

 

“Back to work?” Kangin asks.

 

“Just dumping the files,” Kyuhyun says vaguely, digging through one of the bags in the corner and producing a couple of electronics cords.

 

“We’ll transfer the files over to one of the computers for review, then empty the audio recorders and set them up around the house again,” elaborates Hyukjae.

 

“Will the investigation continue right away?” Leeteuk says, feeling vaguely guilty because he’s starting to worry that he won’t get that nap after all. Maybe he shouldn’t have had so much coffee.

 

“No, we won’t do anything until nightfall. We just need to keep the devices running through the day just in case, but they can’t hold all that data. We’ll listen to see if we’ve picked up any EVPs, or - “ Hyukjae’s hand touches on the video camera Kyuhyun had set on the table, the one Donghae had been using to record their session last night - “We should see if you caught the spirit on camera, Donghae,” he finishes.

 

“Yeong-Ja,” Donghae says with a nod.

 

Leeteuk watches them mess around with all the technical equipment, listening to the far-off echoes of his kids playing somewhere around the front of the house, the dishes half forgotten. Kyuhyun and Sungmin eventually disappear again to place the audio recorders back into the rooms they came from, Hyukjae insisting that he’ll be fine to start reviewing the files as long as Kyuhyun promises he’ll do the transcriptions later. There’s something he’s missing there, some inside joke maybe, but he doesn’t really concern himself with it.

Sungmin, on his part, complained so petulantly when Kangin asked him to do some chores that Leeteuk had to wonder about his sudden interest in the paranormal. That, or the stress of the situation has gotten to him, but when Sungmin eventually followed a waiting Kyuhyun out of the room, Leeteuk thought better of it. Sungmin didn’t have very many people around his age to hang around with, especially after they’ve moved out of Seoul.

 

Leeteuk takes the opportunity for a quick shower before Kangin gets the washing machine going, and he returns to the kitchen to find Donghae leaning over Hyukjae’s shoulder and pointing at one of the monitors, Hyukjae’s expression lit up with excitement. He only catches the tail end of whatever Hyukjae says before playfully pushing Donghae’s hand away from the screen. Donghae reaches for the computer mouse instead.

 

“What’s going on?” Leeteuk asks, unable to stop the corner of his mouth from lifting.

 

“We caught her,” Donghae says.

 

“Full body apparition,” Hyukjae elaborates, sounding almost awed, as if he was saying they’d just found the holy grail.

 

“Well, almost. And it’s only a second. But she’s there.” Donghae waves Leeteuk over, and he goes to join them.

 

Hyukjae scrolls the video back. On the screen is Hyukjae, walking around the center of the common room trying to provoke the demonic presence; Kangin and Leeteuk can be seen in glimpses to the far right if the camera’s movement follows Hyukjae in that direction.

 

“Watch here,” Donghae says, pointing at the spot on the screen where one of the common room entrances shows through to the shadowy corridor. Something flickers there on the screen. “Did you see it?”

 

Leeteuk frowns, shaking his head a little.

 

“It’s not the good part, don’t worry, that one’s hard to see,” Hyukjae says. He scrolls back once more and hits play again. This time, Leeteuk can tell that there’s a slight change in the depth of the shadows, a hint of movement from one side of the entryway to the other.

 

“I think I see it. That’s her?”

  
“Keep watching.”

 

The video plays through for another minute or two. Donghae’s voice is loud coming from behind the camera when he tells Hyukjae that he’s seen Yeong-Ja, and the camera seems to drop a little after that, as if he’s not actually looking at what he’s filming anymore. Then it swings sharply to the side, toward another of the entryways, and this time it’s easy to see. Leeteuk’s heart jumps into his throat.

 

Donghae says, “Do it in slow motion.” Hyukjae clicks around on the screen and then the same few seconds of video play, but much more slowly.

 

It’s a girl. It’s unmistakable that there’s a child there, even though the camera is at an angle and you only catch a glimpse, but the shape of a dress is easy to see, the movement of the skirt. Hyukjae plays it for a third time, this time pausing the video at the instance that Yeong-Ja can be seen fully.The more he looks, the easier it is to tell the shape of her body, even the long braided hair. Her feet can’t be seen because they’re off-camera, and when Hyukjae clicks play she’s gone in a flash. The camera just barely caught her - but it caught her.

 

“That’s… that’s amazing.”

 

“It’s going to help our case a lot. We still have to go through the audio and the rest of the footage from last night, but this is damn good even if we don’t turn up anything more. And it’s promising. We might be lucky enough to catch solid evidence of a demon infestation tonight.”

 

Hyukjae still sounds excited, but some of Leeteuk’s enthusiasm wilts as he remembers that the spirit of an innocent child is not the only thing they’re dealing with here.

 

“Everything okay?”

 

Leeteuk looks up to see Kangin in the doorway, balancing a large basket of wet towels and sheets on his hip.

 

The basket gets left behind in favor of showing him the video as well, although Kangin doesn’t take it at face value and the two investigators have to explain to him why this is solid evidence. They agree to work on trying to debunk the video later tonight, which Leeteuk doesn’t find necessary, but he doesn’t say anything. Kangin has to deal with this in his own way. Somehow or another, watching that video clip had made him feel better about the way everything is going, like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel after all, so when Hyukjae asks whether they’d like to help review the footage from last night, Leeteuk volunteers. Maybe it will make him feel like he’s doing something about the problem instead of just hanging around and hoping it will end. Kangin claims that he has to set the laundry to dry, and to Leeteuk’s surprise, Donghae offers to help. Hyukjae doesn’t seem to bat an eye at this, and Kangin is surprised at the offer, but accepts it.

 

“It’s best to have two sets of eyes,” Hyukjae explains to Leeteuk as he sets up playback for data from one of the cameras that had been recording overnight. “We’ll probably need a trained ear to review the audio, but if we see anything on the video, mark down the timestamp so we can check for an accompanying EVP.”

 

Leeteuk nods and nods, and then Hyukjae hits play on a video of the east wing corridor, and they settle back to watch.

  
 

-

  
 

There’s a clothesline set up on the south side of the house adjacent to the kitchen. When they’d moved in, there had been an obvious gap in the guest bath at the front of the house where large, industrial-sized washer and dryer had probably been in place while the property was being run as a guest house, but apparently some perfectly good machinery was something the previous owners had felt was important enough to remove before they sold the place. With five kids, Kangin is sure that a huge laundry would have been helpful, but as it is, they had to invest in a cheaper washing machine, with drying the old-fashioned way until winter sets in.

 

Donghae trails behind him quietly, and it isn’t until Kangin drops the laundry basket to the ground with a thump that he remembers the other’s injured hand.

 

“You know, I can manage just fine on my own if your hand still hurts.”

 

“Hm?” Donghae stares at Kangin for a second before he seems to remember. “Oh, it’s fine.” He demonstrates this by lifting his wrapped hand and flexing his fingers, but it doesn’t seem very convincing. It still looks stiff, and he winces just slightly. “I need to change the dressing anyway.”

 

Shrugging, Kangin grabs the end of one of the damp bedsheets and tugs it out of the tangle of linens. “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but you’re doing enough help around here, chores aren’t really a requirement.”

 

Donghae laughs a bit, finding the opposite end of the sheet and walking backwards so that it’s straightened out between them. “Reviewing the evidence has never been my favorite part. The equipment picks up a lot of things that can’t be seen by the naked eye, but to me it’s like being blindfolded. I can’t feel it.”

 

Kangin doesn’t say anything for a long moment. They drape the sheet over the line and go back for another. He’s not a skeptic in the way Heechul is - there’s no way he could be, not after what he’s seen and heard in this house. But if you’d asked him a month ago, he would have said that ghosts aren’t real. Hell, even when things started going sour, it took him a hell of a lot of convincing before he was ready to accept that the paranormal really existed. The idea that someone, a regular person just like him, could sense things outside of what’s normal for the human experience, is stretching it just a bit too far.

 

Hell if he’d ever question it to Donghae’s face, though. After that video he just saw, he’s ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“So,” he says finally, “that video of the spirit - that’s what you see all the time?”

 

Donghae pauses in his reach for the next sheet in the basket, looking at Kangin fully. “Not exactly. Yeong-Ja, for example, looked more real to me than she does on film. But not very many spirits are strong enough for even me to physically see. Last night was the first time I actually saw her because she can’t manifest on her own. When it - the other thing, the demon - when it needs energy, it draws it from her. You know how every light in a room will get brighter during a power surge? It’s like that.”

 

That’s when it hits him like a thunderclap. “I’ve seen her,” Kangin says, sounding shocked even to his own ears.

 

Donghae blinks. “When?”

 

“Shit, how did I forget? It was the night Sungmin saw it, the night we decided that we were going to need help. I woke up right before, and….” He remembers seeing a figure in the bedroom, but the memory had faded like a dream in the wake of what had happened next. “I thought it was one of the kids. But it must have been her. Yeong-Ja.”

 

Donghae is smiling when he looks up, looking pleased and almost fond. “She was trying to warn you. Actually, that’s probably why she showed up last night as well.”

 

“I couldn’t see her last night, though.”

 

“You were asleep before you saw her, right? You might not have been fully awake. The hypnopompic state is what they call that place between waking and sleeping. Most of what people see at that time are hallucinations, but people have a harder time connecting emotions to reality in that state, so it’s easy to suspend disbelief. You stop trying to make logical sense out of everything, so the illogical is easier to understand.”

 

“I have to be honest, I’ve never been really into this stuff. But I can’t really argue with that explanation,” Kangin chuckles.

 

“Sorry,” Donghae says, coloring slightly. “Hyukjae is the one who does all the paranormal research, but we’ve been doing this for so long that I can’t help but learn the ways that most people experience it.”

 

“Normal people, you mean,” Kangin jokes, helping to throw the last of the bedsheets over the clothesline. There’s a pile of sopping bath towels still at the bottom of the basket, and he hands one of them to Donghae, who shrugs unapologetically at his comment, and then starts wringing the rest of the water out of a second.  

They work in silence for a minute or two. Donghae doesn’t seem anxious at all, doesn’t act like his burned hand is bothering him… he wonders if he’s just really good at hiding his agitation, or if he really is used to all this. Hyukjae, on the other hand, had seemed more than a little upset at Donghae’s injury the night before, maybe even more upset than Kangin himself had been feeling about Leeteuk’s experience. Surreptitiously watching Donghae swing a towel over the line and straighten its edges, Kangin wonders not for the first time if there isn’t some part of his story that he’s missing.

 

“How long have you been together?” Kangin asks casually, sweeping his eyes back to concentrate on the washbin at his feet.

 

“Hmm?” Donghae hums distractedly. Kangin peers up at him again; he can’t understand how Donghae can be this calm. “Hyukjae? Since university. He was writing his paranormal theories in the school paper but no one was taking him seriously. Except for me.”

 

“Ah. Okay. You seem… you’re good together.” Kangin hands him another wet towel and Donghae twists it, humming again in agreement as the water droplets hit the ground.

 

“I don’t know where I’d be without him. Sometimes it’s hard to remember which part of the world I belong to. He helps.” Donghae pauses a moment to hang the towel over the line. “And he’s beautiful too, you know?”

 

“Ah. Um.” Kangin steps back into the tub, awkwardly squishing the cloth and water around with his feet. “Well, that’s.”

 

Donghae chuckles, smiling kindly at Kangin and saving him from having to answer. “Don’t worry. It’s not something you could really see, anyway.”

 

“Like an aura?”

 

“I thought you said you weren’t into this stuff,” Donghae says, grinning.

 

“I did research!”

 

Donghae just laughs, wringing out another towel. “It’s not really an aura. That’s something most mediums could see and identify, if they cared to look. Everyone has an aura, that’s natural. What I’m talking about is more… personal. Hyukjae is important to me. It resonates.”

 

They work in silence after that, rinsing and wringing and hanging clothes. Donghae glances sidelong at Kangin after a few minutes, and then says quietly, “You’re like that too, sometimes. When you’re with Leeteuk.”

 

Kangin bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling too hard. “Can you see your own aura?” he asks, maybe a little too loudly, feeling suddenly exposed.

 

“I try not to.” He gives a little laugh, but his voice sounds odd. Donghae spends extra time smoothing the last towel over the line. There it is again - the feeling like Kangin is missing something. When Donghae turns around again, his smile is back in place. He looks into the empty basket and then back at the clothesline, eyebrows raised. “That’s it?”

 

“That’s it. Now let’s go grab my phone so I can ask Heechul what the hell is taking him so long.” Kangin swoops over to pick up the basket and the two of them fall into step together, heading back across the lawn.

 

-

 

The first few minutes of the video are at least somewhat interesting - nothing paranormal, but this was the camera set up in the east wing, so on the screen Donghae and Heechul had wandered around, recording the base EMF readings. There is other footage that Hyukjae is more eager to watch, like anything going on in the common room for the first half of the night. He thinks they’ll watch the video of Donghae’s K2 session with Yeong-Ja next; it will be good for Leeteuk to see. The audio files he’s going to want to listen to with Donghae himself.

 

On the screen, Donghae and Heechul had disappeared into one of the rooms and for the last seven minutes, Hyukjae and Leeteuk had been staring at footage of the empty corridor.

 

“You do this for every investigation?” Leeteuk asks.

 

Not looking away from the screen, Hyukjae says, “Pretty much, unless we’re sure there hadn’t been any activity. Sometimes we’ll investigate for a night just to put clients at ease, even if Donghae swears up and down that there’s no hint of the paranormal.”

 

“Kyuhyun and Sungmin kept an eye the cameras last night, though, didn’t they?”

 

Hyukjae shrugs. “He watches, but he’s also usually doing a bunch of other technical stuff at the same time.”

 

Leeteuk huffs a quiet laugh.

 

“I can mess around with audio and video programs, but setting up live feeds and all that - it’s why we hired Kyuhyun in the first place.”

 

“Hired?”

 

“Well, he - doesn’t get paid. But he’s the one who tracked us down and offered to help in the first place.”

 

“You’ve been doing this a long time, right? You and Donghae looked pretty young in some of those pictures you showed at the seminar.”

 

Hyukjae nods. Neither of them take their eyes off the screen, which is still void of activity. “We’ve been investigating since before we were together, technically. Our second year of university.”

 

“So, ghost hunting brought you together, huh?” Leeteuk’s voice is colored with cheerfulness, but something about it makes Hyukjae glance away from the screen to look at him.

 

“I guess you could say that. What about you two? You and Kangin?”

 

“We met in the army.”

 

Hyukjae turns to look back at the screen. Leeteuk’s sentence had been filled with a heavy weight. “That’s… I can imagine… I mean…”

 

“It was hard,” Leeteuk says with a rueful laugh. “It was damn difficult, especially since it snuck up on both of us.”

 

Hyukjae swallows, a sudden lump forming in the base of his throat. “I bet. Donghae and I served after we graduated; we’d been together for two years already.” Which meant, of course, hiding for two years, from everyone but their family and closest friends. And then there had been two years of Hyukjae shamefully letting his fellow soldiers assume he had a girlfriend waiting at home, when he’d actually had a boyfriend, who wasn’t just waiting, and was actually a conscripted policeman on the other side of the country. He shouldn’t think of it as shameful, especially because the two of them had discussed it together and Donghae had been doing the same. But it hadn’t felt right, and he hated that he needed to lie to everyone just to keep himself and the person he loved safe.

 

But what Leeteuk and Kangin had gone through must have been so much more dangerous.

 

“It’s worth it though, right?” Leeteuk says in a soft voice. Hyukjae smiles, eyes still glued to the monitor, mind elsewhere. They’d gotten their first apartment right after discharge, and everything that had followed had indeed been worth everything that came before it. And now there’s Ara, despite incredible odds.

 

“Oh hey, if you don’t mind my asking, I’ve kind of been curious about your kids? When Donghae and I tried to adopt, it was next to impossible.”

 

“I don’t mind. And Donghae told me how you got around that - your mother, I think, is your daughter’s legal guardian?”

“That’s right.”

 

“That was a pretty smart idea. We - that is, I don’t have much family, and… to be honest, that wouldn’t have been an option. We don’t have a lot of support.” Hyukjae chews on the inside of his lip, feeling for the second time that he’s accidentally stepped on some nerve. He knows how incredibly lucky he is that his parents support his relationship, but of course it’s not like that for everyone. Leeteuk doesn’t seem to be taking it to heart, though, and continues. “But Kangin was able to adopt as a single parent. We sort of took advantage of the system, to be honest. Sungmin was nearly a teenager, which would have made him much less likely to find a permanent home.”

 

“He’s a good kid.”

 

“Yeah, we lucked out with him,” Leeteuk says with a chuckle. “He’s the only one legally adopted, the rest of the kids are technically fosters.”

 

“More taking advantage of the system?”

 

“Absolutely,” Leeteuk says darkly.

 

Hyukjae can understand the feeling. It had been so frustrating for them when they first started looking to adopt. They were turned down again and again, despite the fact that there were so many children and infants who needed homes.

 

“Do you think you’ll foster any more?”

 

Leeteuk gives a heavy sigh. “I don’t think so. Five is quite a lot, but we’re trying to push for some changes in the system. Sungmin is especially passionate about it. What about you?”

 

“We haven’t really talked about it. But then we never talked about having kids at all until - ”

 

He cuts himself off. He knows that “until” is hanging in the air, but Leeteuk doesn’t press. On the monitor, there is a change: himself, walking down the corridor and disappearing into the same room Donghae and Heechul had gone into. He’d been bringing them equipment. He hadn’t been there for very long, and indeed, his on-screen self exits the room after less than a minute and then heads back down the corridor. No change after that, and they’re back to staring at video foortage so still that it might as well be a photograph.

 

“I should tell you something,” Hyukjae says finally. “This is our first investigation involving a non-human entity in three years.”

 

Silence for a minute, and then Leeteuk says gently, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

 

“It’s not that there weren’t any cases, but I… the last time we were involved in an exorcism it didn’t exactly go well for us.”

 

Hyukjae mentally kicks himself for this instantly; the last thing he needs is to stress Leeteuk further. But Leeteuk only says, very gently, “Were you hurt?”

 

He sighs. “Not me. Listen, I don’t want to scare you, but it’s never easy to deal with an exorcism. It’s especially hard on Donghae, but he’s incredibly strong. And last time, something managed to damage that.”

 

“The demon?”

 

“It did… it did something. I don’t know what, but afterward, Donghae locked himself up at home and didn’t speak for eight days.”

 

He has to take a few deep breaths, trying hard to concentrate on the screen in front of him. He hasn’t really told anyone apart from Donghae’s own mother, and saying it out loud makes it seem somehow worse.

 

“So that’s why you’re so careful with him.”

 

“It’s that obvious?”

 

“Very,” Leeteuk says.

 

“The demon showed him something, that’s the best way I can think to describe it. And to be honest, he hasn’t been the same since. That’s when we decided we needed something else in our lives, something positive. And now we have Ara.”

 

Leeteuk makes a low sound of understanding in his throat. “What did he see?”

 

Hyukjae clenches his jaw, then relaxes. “I don’t know. And I won’t ask.”

 

A minute passes, and then Leeteuk reaches over and grabs the mouse. Hyukjae leans out of his way and lets him press the pause button on playback.

 

“Well,” Leeteuk says, gathering his long-empty coffee mug from the table, “We’re more grateful to you than ever for deciding to help us.”

 

“Thank Donghae,” Hyukjae says wryly, turning in his seat to watch him walk back across the room.

 

“You’re both taking risks,” Leeteuk says with a smile.

 

When he turns to place the cup into the sink, the sleeve of his shirt pulls back from his wrist, and Hyukjae catches a glimpse of something that makes his stomach drop. Hyukjae’s hand is on Leeteuk’s wrist before he realizes he’s even moved, and they both freeze. There’s a dark bruise on the skin of his wrist, spread wide across the side.

 

“What happened?”

 

Leeteuk hesitates, eyes a little wide. He shrugs at the same time as he turns his wrist over in Hyukjae’s hand to reveal the rest of the bruise, spreading across the underside, bluish-black and nasty enough that Hyukjae hisses in a breath.

 

“Nothing,” Leeteuk says. At Hyukjae’s raised eyebrow, he tries again. “I mean, nothing happened that I remember. I think I must be doing it at night. Knocking into the bed in my sleep, that sort of thing.”

 

“Leeteuk,” Hyukjae says evenly, “You would remember where a bruise like this came from.”

 

“What’s going on?” comes a voice from the doorway. It’s Kangin, with Donghae hovering close behind him. Kangin looks from Hyukjae to Leeteuk, and then his brows draw in when he focuses on where they’re touching.

 

Hyukjae steps aside when Kangin comes over, letting go only for Kangin to take Leeteuk’s arm, brushing his sleeve back further. “Woah, when did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

Leeteuk finally takes his arm back. “This is why,” he says sharply. “I don’t think they’re a big deal, they’re just bruises.”

 

“They? There’s more than one?”

 

Leeteuk swallows, realizing his mistake. He nods, meeting Kangin’s eye, and something passes between them that Hyukjae can’t interpret.

 

“Leeteuk,” Donghae says, nearly startling Hyukjae with how close he’s gotten to the three of them. “When did the bruises start?”

 

“Um. Last week, I think.”

 

“And they’ve been getting worse?”

 

A nod.

 

Donghae heads over to the table, picking up a camera. “Can I photograph them, if you don’t mind? For evidence?”

 

“So it’s related to the… haunting.” Leeteuk doesn’t ask it like a question, more like his suspicions are being confirmed. Hyukjae can say that he’s never seen it, but he’s heard of mysterious bruises happening in cases related to demonic activity, and he knows Donghae is thinking the same. “I don’t mind photos, but do you need a shot of all of them?”

 

“Jungsoo, how many bruises are we talking, here?” Kangin asks, sounding resigned.

 

Leeteuk looks a bit like a caged animal and Hyukjae is starting to regret acting without any tact. He taps his finger nervously against his thigh. “Hey, we don’t have to do this here if you’re uncomfortable. Maybe Kangin can take the pictures for us, does that sound okay?”

 

They all agree on this. Donghae hands over the camera and the two disappear into the house, leaving Hyukjae to catch Donghae’s worried gaze, no doubt a mirror of his own.

 

“What does this mean?” he says into the quiet room.

 

Donghae shrugs a bit jerkily. “Nothing good.”

 

-

  
 

Kangin clicks the bathroom door shut gently. He wants to ask it again - why didn’t you tell me - but he bites his tongue.

 

Leeteuk pushes his fringe back, tugging on it a little. He pushes out a heavy sigh. “I didn’t mean to make it seem like I’m hiding things from anyone. I didn’t want you to worry.”

 

“I’m worried anyway,” Kangin mutters. He should probably get shit for that, but Leeteuk doesn’t say anything while Kangin fiddles with the camera. “Okay, how many bruises are we talking, here?”

 

“Well, there’s this one.” Leeteuk tugs down the collar of his shirt, revealing the edge of a nasty looking bruise just under his clavicle. Kangin bites the inside of his cheek.

 

“And?”

 

“And - “ He hesitates. Instead of continuing, he pulls his arms through the long sleeves and levers his shirt over the top of his head, turning so that Kangin can see his back.

 

There’s another bruise, smaller and darker under his right shoulder blade. Kangin can see another curving around his ribcage, and has to force himself not to touch.

 

“Do they hurt?” he says at last.

 

Leeteuk shrugs. “Not really, not unless I bump into anything.”

 

He turns to face the front, allowing Kangin to fully see the bruise under his collar, and he’s finally hit with a wave of anger towards whatever the hell is the cause of this. It’s extremely frustrating to not be able to do anything about it, so he just concentrates on staying calm while he looks at the sickly yellow of the days-old bruise, tinged in green around the edges. It’s wide and spreads across the right side of his chest, and while its color shows that it’s obviously healing, it’s still nasty enough.

 

The other bruise, the one Kangin had glimpsed around the Leeteuk’s ribcage, is fresher looking. He remembers the camera when his free hand moves almost involuntarily, and Kangin skates his fingers lightly over the healthy skin just above this rib bruise. Leeteuk doesn’t flinch at all, but his head is lowered. He reminds Kangin of back when everything between them was new and terrifying, back when Leeteuk - Jungsoo - was a closed book and Kangin was nearly as stubborn. But it’s been a very long time since Leeteuk felt like he had anything to hide from Kangin, and he tries not to dwell on the worry. It’s been so many years now since the army days, since Leeteuk had decided he was allowed to be happy as well as strong, and Kangin will be damned if he lets this… thing, whatever it is, make the strongest person he knows feel like he is inadequate.

 

“Hey.” He moves his hand from Leeteuk’s side and gently takes his chin, waiting until he has eye contact. “We are going to be fine. Okay? This will all be behind us soon.”

 

Leeteuk doesn’t avoid the eye contact this time, but he doesn’t seem to be listening either. “Youngwoon-ah,” he says, voice like a wound, “Was it really such a good thing, moving away from Seoul?”

 

“Don’t think like that. We had no idea this would happen.”

 

“That’s not what I meant. Aren’t we just hiding again? Like we used to?”

 

Kangin takes a half step back. Hiding again. It takes a moment before he can form a response. He’d be lying if he hadn’t been thinking that moving out of Seoul would put them further from prying eyes, from people who wouldn’t like the two of them raising their boys and who could hurt their family. But really, isn’t Seoul more progressive than the countryside? “We did this for the safety of the kids. They needed more space, they needed smaller class sizes at school, they needed a fresh start. This was a good decision, Teuk.”

 

“Was it really such a good idea, though, to bring these kids into a home where they risk being mocked - even injured - because of us?”

 

Kangin stares at him. He bites back the sigh, the we’ve been over this; he can’t imagine why Leeteuk is worried about this again. He doesn’t need to be brushed off, though, Kangin recognizes that. Fortitude. He can lend Leeteuk strength.

 

“Did you see them this morning?” He waits for Leeteuk’s shoulders to relax. “Yeah. They’re happy. They are really happy. They’re outside right now playing football or something, being together, counting on each other. And what we’re going through with this... this haunting is not our fault. We have help now. Good help. Okay?”

 

He nods, expression clearing. Kangin pecks his forehead lightly before stepping further back, finally raising the camera for the task at hand. He takes quick shots of all the bruises he can see, plus one on the side of his knee that his jeans won’t roll up far enough to reveal. When the fabric bunches against it and Leeteuk hisses, Kangin makes him awkwardly step out of the pant leg first. He gets the shot, but it takes some fumbling for Leeteuk to get that one pant back on, leaning on Kangin’s shoulder and laughing.

 

After checking to make sure all of Leeteuk’s clothes are back in place, hiding the bruises from sight and mind, they head back into the kitchen where they had left Donghae and Hyukjae. Kangin edges into the room first, seeing them both sitting shoulder to shoulder, pressing headphones onto their ears and staring at the computer monitors with strict concentration.

 

“What’s going on now?” he asks, the scene feeling a bit like déjà vu. They both look up at once and Hyukjae waves them over.

 

“Come here, we think we found some audio. Can you tell us what it sounds like? We can’t figure it out.”

 

Hyukjae hands his headphones to Kangin and he puts them over his ears, Leeteuk hovering by his shoulder. On the screen is just an audio wavelength, a small window with the video footage playing on the program. The footage is of them all gathered in the common room, focused on Hyukjae as he must have been speaking to thin air. Er, to the demon, or whatever the thing is.

 

He presses play and the highlighted section of the wavelength begins to play on a loop. It’s probably two seconds long total, and at first it sounds like nothing. Kangin shakes his head.

 

“Here, for some context - “ Hyukjae plays a longer cut of the audio, the sound of his voice asking, “We’ve dealt with your kind before. You know that, right? Listen, just give it up.”

 

The EVP audio in question can be heard vaguely, sounding just like some sort of background noise behind the smaller section Hyukjae highlights again: “...that, right? Listen...”

 

“It’s there, sort of. We’ve tried to isolate it but it’s difficult when the EVP is talked over. It sounds like it’s not a complete sentence, maybe? Through something, near something… or it’s addressing me? ‘You’ something.”

 

Hyukjae lets Leeteuk listen next, finally settling on that original two seconds of sound, isolated and sounding very distorted, like a sound that hasn’t come from a human throat. Unplugging the headphones so they can all hear, Kangin feels like his eyes are crossing, watching the spikes of the wavelength play over and over. He mouths to words to himself, trying to figure out what he could be hearing, and he is close to giving up and suggesting that it’s just a stray sound, not a ghost talking or anything like that, when Leeteuk suggests, “Could it be a name? Chanyeol? Jinoo?”

 

“Jin Oh,” Donghae says, very quietly.

 

There’s a pause, and then Hyukjae slams a pair of headphones over his ears and plugs them in with fingers that, Kangin can’t help but to notice, are shaking.

 

“You’re right,” he says after a moment, cold and hard. Removing the headphones once again, Hyukjae slams them on the table and stands up.

 

“Hyukjae,” Donghae tries, settling a hand on his elbow, but Hyukjae just says “Jin Oh,” the name heavy with a meaning that Kangin cannot begin to grasp, has no frame of reference for. Then he steps back from the table and pushes past them all, stalking out of the room as Donghae scrambles to follow, saying, “Hyukjae, wait;” disappearing into the corridor and leaving Kangin to exchange a wide eyed glance with Leeteuk, completely baffled.

 

The audio is still playing on repeat, coming muffled through the headphones. Leeteuk leans in, the both of them now ignoring the distant sounds of an argument that is now taking place at the front of the house, and on the computer, he presses stop.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for implied child abuse and off-screen violence. This does not affect/involve main characters.

“Lee Hyukjae, where are you going?”

 

Donghae doesn’t manage to keep the irritation out of his voice at all, nor control the heaviness of his steps as he chases Hyukjae to the front of the house. He realizes how loud he’s being when his words fill up the wide space of the front entry room.

 

Hyukjae stops abruptly, spinning on his heel to face him, but at least he’s not headed out the door. “I’m calling Siwon,” he says, terse.

 

“You need to calm down.”

 

“No,” Hyukjae bites out.

 

“Please do not act like our three-year old right now.”

 

“You can’t tell me that was a coincidence. Jin Oh, Donghae! That means nothing good for you and nothing good for Leeteuk’s family. I’m calling Siwon and he’s going to take care of this, and we are going to go home.”

 

“I’m serious, Hyukjae. Calm. Down.”

 

“Donghae, please,” Hyukjae implores, his voice wavering even though his jaw clenches immediately thereafter. His aura is muddied with gray, weighed down with fear and shot through with a shock of bright worry. Donghae blocks it out, like shutting a door.

 

“It doesn’t mean anything. I’m not going to call it a coincidence, but listen to me, it doesn’t mean anything.”

 

“It’s the same - “

 

“Please trust me on this. It is not the same demon. Hyukjae, you taunted it. It is trying to do this to us.” Donghae waves a hand in the space between them. “It knows there’s a weakness and it’s going to exploit that. But it’s not the same entity. That one is gone, remember? You saw that, remember?”

 

There. Finally, the hard lines of Hyukjae’s face begin to soften and he blinks, eyes fixed on Donghae’s, calculating. Donghae doesn’t risk checking Hyukjae’s aura, though.

 

“We’re not going to risk this thing hurting you again. You’re absolutely right, it knows there’s a weakness, it knows it can get to you - ”

 

Donghae takes three long strides forward, reaching Hyukjae and setting his palms against his biceps. “You have to stop this.”

 

Hyukjae’s mouth snaps shut and he takes two deep breaths, chest rising and falling. Donghae rubs his hands against his upper arms, then slides them up to settle on the curves of his shoulders. “It can’t use the past against us if we don’t let it. You’ve been feeding into it since we started.”

 

“Hae. I know you didn’t sleep last night.”

 

Donghae bites the insides of his cheeks. Damn, he’d thought he’d been careful. He sighs. “Okay, okay, I know it’s not just you. But I can’t protect myself with your worry pushing at me from all sides, so I’d like you to try a little harder if you can.”

 

Hyukjae nods curtly. “I know. I’ll try.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“I’m still calling Siwon.”

 

“I will call Siwon,” Donghae says, stroking his thumbs once down Hyukjae’s neck before letting go and stepping back. “You will go calm down.”

 

Hyukjae laughs dryly, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Yeah. I’ll call home and check on Ara, maybe. And go apologize to Kangin and Leeteuk.”

 

“That might be a good idea, they are very confused in there.”

 

“Will you sleep later?”

 

“I’ll try.”

 

Hyukjae doesn’t look satisfied with that answer, but he doesn’t push. He takes in a few deep breaths and Donghae knows his flight response is calming down, making way for logic. “Let’s see what happens tonight. If there’s nothing, we send what we have to the Vatican and after that, it’s a waiting game. We might be able to go home for a few days to recharge.”

 

While he doesn’t like the idea of leaving the family alone in this house, Donghae admits that going home sounds nice. This entity will most likely continue to target them, and weakness is not exactly a preferred method for exorcising demons.

 

“We’ll see how it goes,” he says, offering Hyukjae a small smile.

 

They go their separate ways - Hyukjae towards the kitchen; Donghae out the front door and away from the persistent oppression that he feels inside that house. Admittedly, it’s a relief to move away from the weight of Hyukjae’s worry for the moment as well.

 

The kids are all gathered out front with the addition of Kyuhyun and Sungmin, who must have finished resetting the equipment ages ago, Donghae realizes. Well, they found a good use of their time: they seem to be organizing a small football match. Donghae waves as he passes by. Maybe he’ll join in for a while after his phone call. For now he moves over toward the garden outside the north wing, settling down on the wood porch lining the outside wall. The garden itself seems to be doing okay, just a little overrun with weeds, but Donghae finds it calming. He pulls out his phone.

 

Siwon answers on the second ring as if he’d been just waiting to hear from them. Donghae had let him know to be on standby after their first visit to the house, so it’s possible that he has been waiting.

 

“Already?” is what he answers with.

 

Donghae lets out a wry laugh. “Hi, Siwonnie.”

 

“How are you holding up?” Then, voice lower, “Or I guess I should be asking how Hyukjae is holding up.”

 

“Pretty well for both of us until about ten minutes ago.”

 

“Uh oh. Do you need me to come out there? Just say the word, Hae.”

 

“Thanks. I don’t know if we need you here just yet, but we’d appreciate if you could get the process started with the Vatican.”

 

Siwon actually curses at that. “I’d been hoping you wouldn’t need to take it that far.”

 

“So did we. Unfortunately, we’re already looking at the oppression stage. We have pretty solid evidence for spirit activity, but proof for demonic activity is not quite enough for the Vatican to approve the exorcism, I don’t think. We might have to send out what we have soon, though. It - the demon…” he trails off, wondering if Siwon’s reaction is going to be anything like Hyukjae’s had been.

 

“It did what, Donghae?”

 

“It… alluded to last time.”

 

“Last time.” It’s not a question, but more of a confirmation that Siwon knows exactly what he’s talking about.

 

“Just a mention of Jin Oh’s name. A reminder. I don’t think it was threatening us, just scaring us. To be honest... it worked. Especially on Hyuk. He wanted to call you, but he was too hysterical.”

 

“Oh, Donghae, if it’s that bad, I’ll talk to him.”

 

“I just didn’t want him to alarm you.”

 

“Listen, why don’t you send me the proof you have? I’ll take a look, I’ll get the ball rolling, and then I’ll come out there. It sounds like you both need a fresh perspective.”

  
Donghae finds the mere idea of Siwon coming out here to be calming. Just hearing his voice is helping to ease some of the tension, although he wishes he didn’t have to involve Siwon in this. In any of this. But Siwon was the first person to ever believe Donghae, back when he was barely a teenager and the pastor Donghae had known his whole life suggested that Donghae needed to be cleansed of a sin that was inside him. Siwon was the only reason the church ever bothered with Donghae and Hyukjae anymore, and they needed him in exactly this kind of situation.

 

“Okay. I’ll send it as soon as we can, and we’re holding another investigation tonight. Hopefully we’ll get the evidence we need for approval without a shadow of a doubt.”

 

“Just be safe, Hae. I’ll call Hyukjae before nightfall.”

 

“Thank you, Siwon.”

 

“You’re always in my prayers.”

 

After he hangs up, Donghae considers that football match again. Then he wonders if Hyukjae still has Ara on FaceTime. They’ll have to resume the evidence review as soon as they can, which could mean putting Kyuhyun to work, but Donghae decides not to drag him away from the fun just yet.

 

In the end, he heads back inside.

 

-

 

Heechul drives onto the dusty lot in front of Jungsoo’s house after what feels like hours winding his car up the long driveway. He has to practically crawl to get his car close to the house because every single one of the kids are in his path. Sungmin notices and starts herding the rest of the group off to the side, hauling a tired-looking Ryeowook into his arms as he does so.

 

“There you are,” Sungmin says when Heechul steps out of the car, as if he’s been gone for days instead of a few hours. Ryeowook squirms and Sungmin easily sets him on his feet.

 

“Hyung! We played football and you missed it!”

 

“Yeah, kiddo? Was it fun?”

 

“We lost.”

 

Heechul snorts, ruffling the kid’s head a little. “Been out here all day?” he asks Sungmin, who half-nods, half-shrugs.

 

He frowns, but doesn’t comment on that either and just grabs the grocery bags from the backseat of his car. When he’d called Jungsoo last week and demanded to know why he hadn’t been invited to visit the new house (truth be told, he’d missed the chaos that was visiting them in their tiny Seoul apartment), he thought country life had just been getting to his friend’s head. Hell, after living in the city for half his life, Heechul knows he’d be going crazy out here from the quiet or loneliness or too much fresh air or worse. He just never thought that what was putting the strain in Jungsoo’s voice had been the worse.

 

But he expected to come out here and support his old friend just going through one of his rough patches, not an entire family too afraid of their own house to even spend too much time inside of it.

 

Plus, he can’t imagine Youngwoon agreeing to let some paranormal investigators into the house if there wasn’t something truly bothering them. Whether or not he believes that Donghae is psychic or that there are really demons here, he has yet to decide.

 

It’s quiet when he brings the groceries into the house. Too quiet. Were the rest of them outside somewhere, too? But when he shuffles into the kitchen, one half of his body weighed down from hauling the frozen chicken along with the rest of the stuff all the way from outside, he finds everyone sitting around the table and staring at the computers. Nobody even looks up when he drops the bags of groceries onto the empty half of the table.

 

“....Helloooo?” He drags the word out, waving his hands. That one kid - Kyuhyun, the smug one - actually holds up a finger and mouths one minute at him, and Heechul has to hold up an ever ruder finger in response, but the kid doesn’t even see it because he’s still staring at the damn computer.

 

Finally Kangin lowers a set of headphones around his neck and looks at him. “You okay? You were gone for a while.”

 

At this, Kyuhyun finally looks away from the screen, and the other two pull headphones off their ears as well. Donghae looks half asleep and Hyukjae looks like if he were sitting any closer, he’d be on Donghae’s fucking lap.

 

“Did you know that it takes forever to get anywhere in this town? And all of the shops are tiny.”

 

Kangin ignores him and half rises from his seat, peering over at the groceries. “Oh? Did you actually buy food?”

 

It’s a stupid question, given that the food he indeed bought is sitting right there, so Heechul doesn’t answer. But he does notice that someone is missing from this room.

 

“Where is Jungsoo? Is he okay?”

 

“He went for a nap. Apparently he didn’t sleep well.”

 

“Oh.” Heechul blinks. “Good, he looked like shit this morning. Why are you all sitting in here like zombies, anyway?”

 

“We’re reviewing the evidence,” Kyuhyun says, an annoying tone to his voice that makes a simple sentence seem like a challenge. Heechul is not going to rise to a challenge, because he is an adult, god dammit.

 

Kangin starts pulling the food out of the bags and setting them on the counter, moving the chicken into the sink to thaw. “I thought you went to buy clothes or something.”

 

Heechul shrugs. “I did.”

 

Then a phone rings, and he won’t lie, it startles him. It makes everyone in the room jump slightly, even though nothing creepy or unsettling was even happening. But the somber, late afternoon feel of the house that Heechul had noted the moment he walked in was broken by the sound, and maybe it made everyone aware that they were letting dread permeate the atmosphere.

 

Hyukjae wrestles his phone out of his pocket, muttering an apology. His eyebrows tick up when he looks at the screen and Donghae leans over the very small space between them to look as well.

 

“He told me he wanted to,” he tells Hyukjae, which means absolutely nothing to Heechul but Hyukjae stands up and steps around the table, bringing the phone to his ear as he leaves the room, the faint “Hello?” as he answers drifting back into the kitchen.

 

“Okay.” Heechul says into the silence, three pairs of eyes turning to him. “What did I miss?”

 

\-  

 

Dinner is a quiet affair. Leeteuk has slept through most of the afternoon, so while Donghae begins to prepare the chicken and enlists Sungmin’s help with the side dishes, Kangin slips out of the kitchen and goes to find Leeteuk.

 

Rather than going to their room or even one of the guest rooms, Leeteuk had chosen to curl up on the mess of blankets and pillows that the kids had created in the study. When Kangin enters, there’s a Leeteuk-shaped lump buried under blankets, the dusty brown mop of hair giving him away.

 

“Teuk?” Kangin tries, but there’s no reply. He can hear the muffled sounds of everyone in the kitchen through the walls, but it’s otherwise a quiet stillness in the study.

 

He kneels beside Leeteuk, shaking his shoulder gently. “Hey, Jungsoo. Wake up.”

 

Leeteuk shifts onto his back, struggling a bit with the tangle of blankets to free an arm and rubs a hand through his hair, squinting up at Kangin with one eye. “Ngkay?” he mumbles.

 

Kangin just blinks at him. Leeteuk groans sleepily, squeezing his eyes shut, and then sits up. He tries again. “Everything okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Kangin huffs, “But you slept all day. We’re making dinner. Heechul bought a chicken,”

 

Leeteuk just looks at him blankly and Kangin waits until all of that information catches up in his brain. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”

 

“Why?”

 

“For sleeping so long.”

 

“Don’t be. Plenty of people here to watch the kids, you deserve some rest.”

 

Leeteuk makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, still clearly fogged with sleep, but Kangin takes that as an acknowledgement. Not much he can say will assuage Leeteuk’s guilt when it comes to lazing around when there’s so much going on, so he doesn’t press. He stands up, offering a hand for Leeteuk to take, helping to lift him to his feet. Leeteuk stretches and yawns. still squinting around like he doesn’t know where he is.

 

“I hate taking naps. Feels like I’m not in real time anymore.”

 

Kangin laughs. “Yeah, well none of this feels very real anyway, does it.”

 

Leeteuk only gives him a pointed look, face drawn. He decides to take a shower before dinner, so Kangin leaves him to it. Chicken isn’t necessarily the quickest of meals and it feels like everyone's just hanging around the kitchen with hungry eyes, the sun setting too quickly, drawing them nearer to tonight’s investigation.

 

When Leeteuk returns from his shower, hair still damp but skin looking much brighter, he oohs and aahs about the food preparation, thanking everyone who comes within five feet of him until Kangin smacks his shoulder lightly and rolls his eyes.

 

It’s a bit crowded at the table with all the computers  still set up but Sungmin and Kyuhyun have managed to keep the kids pretty well entertained. Especially if one considers Heechul a kid, and Kangin definitely does. They’re all crowded around one of the monitors watching Kyuhyun play some kind of game that Kangin can neither identify nor understand, but they seem enraptured by it. Save for Ryeowook, who is curled up in Leeteuk’s lap and pretending like he understands the adult’s conversation.

 

“So what’s the game plan for tonight?” Kangin asks.

 

“I think we’ll just see what happens,” Hyukjae says. “It obviously knows we’re here and knows what we’re after, so…”

 

He trails off with a shrug. He still looks pretty agitated - toying with his phone but not actually using it, bouncing his knee. Donghae, on the other hand, was a picture of calm. Although, Kangin is willing to concede that Donghae could be just too exhausted to present any kind of anxiety. He frowns, examining Donghae’s face - the shadows under his eyes, the drawn pallor of his skin. Kangin is starting to think he’s the only one getting any damn sleep around here.

 

“No plans,” Donghae confirms. “However it got here in the first place, we’ve as good as invited it in now. So we’ll see what it’s next move is.”

 

“That doesn’t sound like fun,” Leeteuk jokes, but his laughter is nervous and nobody joins him. Hyukjae frowns at Donghae, who shrugs innocently and gets an incredulous look in return, followed by an eye roll - Kangin looks away from whatever wordless banter is going on between them and at the chicken instead, cooling on the counter.

 

“Who’s hungry?”

 

Kibum jumps away from his spot behind Shindong’s shoulder, arm raised. “I am!” It starts a chorus of agreement, including Heechul’s “Fucking finally” which earns him a kick on the shin from Sungmin; from his spot on Leeteuk’s lap, Ryeowook turns away from looking at the adults with big eyes and tugs on his father’s shirt, saying “Me too, I’m hungry, Appa.”

 

It’s impossible to avoid noise with so many young children at dinnertime, but it’s still relatively quiet. Once the meal is all tucked away, Kangin recruits the younger kids into helping him put away the leftovers. Heechul has claimed the computer game for himself and Kyuhyun is standing off to the side, engaged in a quiet conversation with Sungmin. Donghae insists on cleaning the dishes, but Leeteuk does it instead, only letting Donghae help with drying the dishes. Hyukjae pokes around on his phone some more, preoccupied.

 

He only notices because he’s been keeping a watchful, worried eye on Leeteuk - the frail lines of his back as he stands in front of the sink - but Kangin sees a small exchange that he doesn’t think he wants to question at this point. Hyukjae had gone off to the corner behind the table and rifled through the equipment bags there, and when he returned he moved in close to Donghae. He had to set down the wet water glass that Leeteuk handed him in order to take whatever it was Hyukjae offered to him. A small vial of clear liquid that Donghae had tucked into his pocket before Hyukjae moved away.

 

And then the somber, oppressive atmosphere returns. The sun has long-since set and the kids have been sent into the study for the night when Hyukjae looks over at Kyuhyun and asks: “Light’s out?”

 

“Lights out,” Kyuhyun confirms.

 

One more night, Kangin hopes.

 

-

 

“So let me get this straight,” Heechul says, and right into Kyuhyun’s ear because the man has zero respect for personal space, “Someone in here could die?”

 

Kyuhyun resists to urge to roll his eyes. “Your skills at extrapolating information is either impressive or a sign of paranoia. I said people have died from possession, not that anyone here will.”

 

“But what killed him? Other than a demon, don’t say it was a demon.”

 

Heechul had decided that he was needed at equipments base to start off the night, despite Kyuhyun assuring him, repeatedly, that he wasn’t needed. Anywhere. But Sungmin had invited him to stay, so Kyuhyun begrudgingly allowed it. He’s regretting that decision.

 

“He had no pulse. His cause of death was no longer living. I don’t know, he was just dead.”

 

Heechul nods sagely, pauses, and then bursts out laughing. Quietly, at least. “I’m sorry, that just doesn’t sound very scientific. But let’s pretend I believe he was acting like some crazy bastard because he was possessed by a demon and not that he had a brain tumor that killed him after it turned him insane. So,” he leans back against the table and holds up his hand, ticking his fingers like bullet points, “Hyukjae thought the demon that killed this kid is the same one terrorizing Jungsoo’s family, he freaked out and had a loud fight with Donghae, Donghae called a priest, and now the pope is going to come exorcise this place?”

 

“Not the pope, hyung,” Sungmin pipes up. His patience is infinite. “The priest needs permission from the pope to perform an exorcism.”

 

Kyuhyun is also regretting reading Heechul in on what happened while he was gone. He casually switches the monitor in front of him to the second display of video surveillance - the first screen, split between a couple of the bedrooms and the west and east wing corridors, had shown him nothing but Leeteuk and Kangin sitting in one of the bedrooms and talking quietly. This second split screen was even less exciting, divided up between the corridors surrounding the common room and the front entry. He only saw Hyukjae walking down one of the corridors, everything else quiet, but Kyuhyun left it there to observe for the time being. There were cameras set up in the kitchen and the study, where all the little kids were staying, but neither had a live feed.

 

“Yes, but it’s not the same demon,” Kyuhyun says, continuing on the conversation with Heechul. “At least not according to Donghae.”

 

“What makes him so sure?” This was Sungmin, looking the slightest bit nervous, although he hid it well.

 

“His clairvoyance,” Kyuhyun shrugs. “That and the fact that the other demon was successfully exorcised. It’s gone.”

 

Heechul snorts to display his disbelief, but Kyuhyun, who is acting like the paragon of patience himself due to great effort he should be applauded for, ignores him. Again.

 

“Didn’t you say it killed the kid? So was it the demon or not?”

 

“After the demon was exorcised, the kid was a vegetable.” Kyuhyun remembers how Donghae, too, had been unresponsive that day. He bites the inside of his cheek, trying to quell the memories of how scared they all were. But Donghae had snapped out of it before the night was through, and Jin Oh never did. He’d been pronounced legally dead a few days later; Kyuhyun knows, because he was the one who’d gotten the call from Jin Oh’s parents. Hyukjae hadn’t picked up his phone, they said.

 

Kyuhyun won’t ever be able to forget them, he doesn’t think. Their son had just died, and yet they had wanted to know if Donghae was alright, and were genuinely glad to learn that he was.

 

“If people don’t survive exorcisms, then why are they performed?”

 

Kyuhyun blinks, looking away from the monitor to stare at Heechul. He sounded pissed. “They don’t always die. Actually, statistically, they usually live. Without an exorcism they tend to end up destroying themselves and everyone around them until the damned thing is satisfied.”

 

“Were you there that day?” Sungmin asks gently.

 

“Yeah, I was there.”

 

“Why is Hyukjae hyung so upset?”

 

Kyuhyun sighs. “It’s not actually my story to tell.”

 

He expects one of them to press, but Sungmin just nods and drops the subject.

 

“So this priest will be here tomorrow?” Heechul asks. This is what had started the whole conversation in the first place - Kyuhyun mentioning that Siwon was due to arrive in the morning.

 

“That’s what I told you ten minutes ago.”

 

Heechul just grins. Kyuhyun curses himself inwardly for letting his irritation show.

 

“And if we get enough evidence tonight, this priest will be able to exorcise the house, and Jungsoo and Youngwoon will be fine,” Heechul concludes.

 

Kyuhyun nods, trying his best not to smile at the matter-of-fact way Heechul had talked about exorcism. He’s so going to win that bet.

 

He switches the video feed again - Leeteuk and Kangin haven’t moved and all the other screens are quiet - and then switches back. Nobody in the corridors. Kyuhyun frowns. Something’s wrong. Just Leeteuk and Kangin?  
 

There’s one more live feed coming from the common room, and with all that had happened in there the night before, they’d decided not to split the screen and give it a dedicated machine to ensure the files get backed up. That second monitor is currently processing more audio files from yesterday, but he reaches across Sungmin to minimize the audio program. It takes him a second, but there they both are - Donghae and Hyukjae, lying on their sides on the couch. Kyuhyun quickly switches screens, letting them have some privacy.

 

Heechul declares his boredom and pulls out his handphone. Kyuhyun catches Sungmin yawning, checks to make sure there’s still nothing happening on the live feeds, and goes to wake up the coffeemaker.  

-

 

Hyukjae finds Donghae asleep in the common room, of all places. He’d insisted that whatever presence had been trying to warn him away from there was gone, though, and Hyukjae knew how badly he needed sleep, so he tried not to question it.

 

Tonight has been very quiet. It seems extremely fragile to Hyukjae; nobody wants a repeat of last night, but that’s exactly what they’re here for. It’s like everyone is waiting for someone else to trip and set off the alarms. That Donghae is able to relax enough to sleep allows Hyukjae to let his guard down and he suddenly feels bone tired.

 

“Hae,” he tries, brushing at Donghae’s fringe with his index finger. He’s frowning in his sleep, head pillowed by his forearm. Hyukjae guesses he hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He probably just thought he’d lie down for a second… it’s a good idea. He sits lightly on the edge of the couch, stretching out to grasp the armrest with one hand and balance on his side. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend he’s at home.

 

He opens them when Donghae begins to shift, pressing himself further into the back of the couch, the arm not pinned down by his body coming around Hyukjae’s shoulders to help him balance.

 

“Sorry,” Hyukjae whispers. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

 

Donghae sighs and Hyukjae is pressed close enough to feel it rise and fall in his chest. “Was just resting,” he whispers back.

 

“Mm.”

 

They’re quiet, just lying there in the dark. Hyukjae deeply wishes they could just sleep this way, but for now he’ll take silence as respite, closeness as rejuvenation.

 

“I’m worried about Leeteuk,” Donghae murmurs eventually, breaking the silence. It takes effort, but Hyukjae lifts his head to meet his eyes. “He seems… vulnerable.”

 

“Weak?”

 

“His spirit is very strong, but he’s exhausted. Something I don’t understand is weighing on him.”

 

“You think he’s…?”

 

“The target?”

 

“Yeah.”

Donghae sighs. “He’s being exploited.”

 

“Should we tell him?”

 

“I’ll talk to him. Tomorrow, before Siwon comes.”

 

“It’s been quiet tonight,” Hyukjae comments, shifting on the couch.

 

“Almost like it doesn’t want to expend any more energy. But it has plenty to gather,” Donghae says, moving the hand he has around Hyukjae’s shoulders, dragging his knuckles along his spine.

 

“Sorry. I’m trying.”

 

Donghae shakes his head. “It’s not just you. It’s all of us.”

 

Both of their radios chirp at once, shattering the hushed feel of the room. “Sorry,” comes Kyuhyun’s voice, and and Hyukjae meets Donghae’s concerned eyes before reaching to unclip the radio from his back pocket, rolling off the couch and onto his feet as Kyuhyun continues. “But I just lost video feed in the east wing.”

 

“Equipment failure?” Hyukjae asks, eyes locked on Donghae’s, but he isn’t very optimistic.

 

“I’m not sure.”

 

Donghae, who has stood from the couch and retrieved his radio from the low table, switches channels. “Leeteuk? You guys okay?”

 

There’s no reply. Worry begins to set in, and Hyukjae immediately starts to head toward the east corridor, Donghae on his heels.

 

To his relief, there’s the sound of footsteps ahead of them in the dark, and Leeteuk and Kangin both round the corner, equipment in their hands and looking confused.

 

“Hey,” Kangin says, brow furrowed, “we were just coming to find you. The light went out on this thing and the radios died.” He holds up the audio recorder that had been sitting on the bedside table in Ryeowook and Yesung’s room.

 

“Cameras too,” Donghae says, then radios Kyuhyun to let him know they’re okay.

 

Hyukjae suggest they head back to base and watch the remaining monitors while Kyuhyun checks out the equipment and the four of them navigate the perimeter corridors together. They’ve just made it around the corner when their radios chirp again - both his and Donghae’s so close to each other cause an echo, made even more confusing by the static interruptions in Kyuhyun’s message.

 

“... shad-… -cross the grid in the co-... room.”

 

Donghae speeds up a little, turning through the common room entryway instead of further down toward the kitchen. The light grid, which has been set up on the mantle above the fireplace, is still working, casting small points of light as far into the room as the light can reach. It had been set up in the east wing last night and reviewing the video hadn’t shown any interruptions - none of the lights blocked out by anything other than their own bodies as they’d walked through the grid. But Kyuhyun must have just seen something obscuring the lights, and clearly nobody was in the room.

 

Donghae makes it halfway to the center of the room before he stops abruptly, Hyukjae only half a step behind him. There’s a stillness in the air, the two of them frozen there, tiny dots of light covering their bodies, folding around them for only seconds before the grid shuts down entirely, making the darkness seem even deeper. Hyukjae swears he sees his breath misting the air, but Donghae seems to be holding it in. His right hand, hanging only an inch or so away from Hyukjae’s left, twists slowly back to grasp Hyukjae’s forearm, the tightness of his grip just this side of uncomfortable.

 

“Donghae?”

 

His eyes are unfocused. He doesn’t respond. Hyukjae twists around as much as he can with Donghae still gripping tightly to his arm, and he sees the others are hovering a few feet back, looking confused and a little bit alarmed. Kyuhyun is there too, probably from seeing them all enter the common room from the display monitors in the kitchen.

 

Donghae doesn’t move, save for his grip tightening even more. Hyukjae pulls his arm experimentally, trying to see if he’ll let go, but Donghae holds fast. Ignoring the pounding of his heart, Hyukjae grits his teeth, prepared to wait until this passes - whatever it is that he can’t see, whatever it is that’s playing out in front of Donghae, in the space between.

 

-

 

He can see a gentle wind blowing - in the trees, in the way the flames of the campfire bend and rain sparks, softly in the hair of the two men surrounding it - but he can’t feel it. There’s something else, some other feeling, dread echoing like it’s a memory. And it is. Beyond the campfire built on the dirt floor of the courtyard, he can see her. She’s hidden herself in the shadows of the porch, looking eerily similar to the only physical manifestation Donghae has seen of Yeong-Ja with her white garment nearly glowing in the low light, the features of her face indistinct. But it’s not the spirit of the child that he’s looking at now, and she keeps her focus on the two men sitting by the fire.

“You’re absolutely sure?”

 

“You’re questioning me now?”

 

The man who’d spoken first frowns, stoking the fire sullenly. “This could be a mistake you’ll deeply regret, brother.”

 

“No. Taking no action will be what we all regret. What little we have left to lose will be forfeit already if we don’t follow through before she reveals herself.”

 

“This is your daughter. Your only kin.”

 

“Are you not my kin?”

 

Yeong-Ja’s father. He looks at his brother with ire, but his expression could not be described as rational. He seems dangerous, on-edge, and Donghae’s entire being is telling him to leave. But he’s not here, and not witnessing this of his own will, and there’s nothing he can do but watch and hope his suspicions don’t play out.

 

The younger brother sighs. “I am. But I’ve lost my son to this already, and I would do anything to have him back.”

 

“And mine. And my wife. And so many others - do you not see? Will you wait until you lose your wife as well? Yeong-Ja is the only young woman who remains, and the last possible culprit.”

 

“She’s hardly a woman, brother. She’s a child!”

 

“She is not a child. My daughter is dead! Dead like the rest of them! While we starve and die, she is thriving. We’ll put an end to this hunger, this disappearance of our family!”

 

He’s angry. He’s also not a living thing, not in Donghae’s sight, so he can’t read anything from him, like looking at a photograph of a person instead of their living, breathing aura. But he’s been able to put spiritual emotion together with the physical signs of if for long enough to know that his anger is the result of grief, and fear, and that makes it the most dangerous kind.

 

“I think we should wait a little longer. We should let the mudang examine her.”

 

“The mudang has already done what she can,” Yeong-Ja’s father mutters darkly.

 

“What do you mean by that?”

 

Yeong-Ja’s father sits behind the logs of the fire, so Donghae can’t properly see what he has in front of him - he’d assumed it to be a water jug, but with the way he’s protecting the item, the way his brother eyes it with trepidation, Donghae thinks that it must be something far less innocent.

 

“I mean that everything around us has already been cleansed, but the evil remains. And either we wait until the kumiho devours the rest of us, or we take action while we still can.”

 

His brother sighs. He looks deeply unhappy but he’s nodding slowly, his last hesitation turning to resolve.

 

“Go and collect her.”

 

The younger brother unfolds himself and stands up, turning and walking toward the building where Donghae can still see Yeong-Ja’s white dress, can see her take half a step back and then freeze, suspicious. Her uncle walks towards her like a man to the gallows, and Donghae wants to shout, to grab him, to protect her. But he has no influence. He’s only an observer.

 

Stop, he pleads, hoping that Yeong-Ja’s spirit can understand him. Stop, please, I don’t need to see more.

 

But the scene plays on: Yeong-Ja’s uncle has no trouble collecting her small frame, but she kicks and struggles as he carries her back toward the light and heat of the campfire, closer to her father with his dead eyes.

 

“Father!” she cries. “Father, please, I’m your daughter - I’m human! Human!”

 

As she draws closer, Donghae can’t even imagine how her father believes that she’s thriving. He and his brother look gaunt, their clothes hanging loose, but there’s no way Yeong-Ja could be eating well. She’s already so small and pale, the long dark braid hanging down her back coming loose from its plait, her feet and the hem of her clothes gathering dirt and soot as she protests.

 

“Brother, are you sure…?”

 

Yeong-Ja’s uncle is hesitating again, easily fending off the weak child’s struggles, and Donghae sees what has given him pause.

 

“We must,” he replies, gripping the handle of a sickle, drawing the blade against the dirt, unwittingly dragging it into the line of Donghae’s sight. “Don’t be swayed by her trickery.”

 

Donghae has seen enough. Please, the thinks, but he knows Yeong-Ja has been gathering the strength for this all day, and he knows she needs someone to bear witness. Not for the first time, he wishes it doesn’t have to be him.

 

“No - please! I didn’t kill mother, I didn’t kill anyone!”

 

Her uncle doesn’t throw her down, but places her on the ground before the fire, hands heavy as she tries to scramble away from her father and the tool in his hand, a weapon far too strong for a child - unless she’s not a child, but a supernatural evil like he believes.

 

“Donghae!“ He feels a pressure on his body, but Donghae feels too heavy and can’t tear his eyes away from the hand being raised, the reflection of flames on the blade - “Hae…”

 

More pressure, and then his body is being twisted and Donghae stumbles a step to the side and drags in a great breath of air. He’s still in the courtyard, but he’s in the present. His body never left here, the courtyard gone now and replaced with a room; no campfire but a fireplace instead. The porch to the childrens’ building gone, replaced with a corridor, the rooms beyond changed so much over the years. As it is now, the hanok is more beautiful than it was in his vision, more like it could have been had illness and tragedy not struck the family that once lived there almost a hundred years before.

 

He focuses on the present when he hears a hiss of pain. Hyukjae is still pushing against his shoulder, bumping it urgently with the heel of his hand - his right hand; the left arm still tight in a grip that Donghae didn’t even realize he had on it.

 

“Shit,” Donghae croaks, letting go. Hyukjae immediately cradles his left arm to his body, head lowered to examine it. “Did I hurt you? Shit, Hyukjae, I’m sorry - “

 

“It’s okay, it’s fine,” Hyukjae assures quickly. He’s still holding his arm out and Donghae can see the underside of his forearm flushed red, five crescent shaped marks carved in by Donghae’s fingernails.

 

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

 

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry. What’s going on?”

 

His eyes are still a little wide for him to be fine, but Donghae won’t push it if Hyukjae doesn’t want him to. He tries to say Yeong-Ja but his throat closes up around the word.

 

“I know how she died,” he says instead, unable to get the image to fade from his mind’s eye.

 

“This was the girl,” Hyukjae says. Not a question.

 

“Yes. This was Yeong-Ja’s doing, not… not the demon. Oh, Hyukjae. They killed her.”

 

“Who killed her?”

 

Donghae focuses then on Hyukjae, his wide lovely eyes, the concern there. “Her father,” he says lowly, and, “Her uncle,” because her uncle might not have wanted it to happen, but he was complicit. He let it happen. He followed orders. It was a hundred years ago, he tells himself, trying to distance himself.

 

“Why?”

 

This voice was not Hyukjae. Donghae turns to the side and notices everyone else - Kangin, who had spoken; Leeteuk and the horrified look on his face, Kyuhyun with his mouth drawn in a flat line of concern.

 

“They thought she wasn’t human. They thought she was kumiho, and killing their family and crops.”

 

“What the fuck,” Kangin curses, but Donghae looks back at Hyukjae, who still has a hand curved protectively over the marks on his forearm.

 

“It was enough violence and guilt to draw in a demon.”

 

Hyukjae’s expression clears from concern to understanding. “The construction disturbed her. She must have been dormant here for so long, and then builders started changing things, stirring up her trauma and... it found her.”

 

Donghae nods. What he’d just seen must have taken so much effort. She probably couldn’t have done it without the power exchange between her and the demon. He felt a twinge of fondness at that - as payback for all the energy it must have been stealing from her, she used so much of it to show Donghae what had happened to her in a cry for help.

 

He turns sharply when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye, but it’s just Kibum. The mood breaks and he feels like he’s been shaken out of a dream, trying to anchor himself in the here and now. But then Leeteuk says, “Kibum?” with concern, and Donghae has to focus in on the boy.

 

He’s standing just inside the threshold of the room like he’s a puppet whose strings have been cut, and he looks around the room in confusion. “I thought…” he begins to say, and Donghae reads sorrow rolling off him in waves. He looks at Leeteuk. “I’m sorry, my… I thought I saw her, I must be…”

 

“Thought you saw who?” Leeteuk prods.

 

“My mom. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I thought I saw her.”

 

“Where?” Hyukjae says in a tone harder than Donghae thought the situation called for, but the moment the word was spoken, there comes the sound of a door slamming elsewhere in the house.

 

And then the implication finally catches up with him, and at that exact moment Leeteuk hisses, “The kids,” and Donghae notices Kibum’s eyes widen in horror as everyone rushes toward the study.

 

There are shouts coming from within, but they don’t sound painful and Donghae doesn’t pick up anything but distress and confusion. Leeteuk can’t know that and he reaches for the doorknob, but Donghae manages to push his hand away just in time.

 

“Don’t,” he warns, and he catches the betrayed look on Leeteuk’s face right before Leeteuk notices it too: the bronze color of the doorknob is coated in sooty black, and from this close Donghae can feel the heat rolling off it. His own bandaged palm seems to flare up in a sympathetic sort of pain.

 

Shouting through the door doesn’t get any response from the kids, their voices muffled but still raised.

 

“Camera shows nothing,” Kyuhyun says in a rush, having just returned from where he must have been checking the monitors in the kitchen.

 

“Nothing?” Hyukjae echoes.

 

Donghae sees Kyuhyun shake his head but then Kangin is rushing past. He body checks the door full blast and it shudders with the force, but holds fast. Donghae catches Leeteuk by the elbow as Kangin backs up for another go.

 

“They’re fine,” he mutters, low and fast. “I can still feel them and they’re fine, just breathe.”

 

He doesn’t get to see a reaction because Kangin’s third time slamming his shoulder into the door works, and it bursts open so quickly that he nearly falls over. The three kids rush outside, eyes wide but unharmed.

 

“Close the door, close the door,” Shindong says in a shaky voice, and it’s Hyukjae who complies. Donghae watches him touch gently at the doorknob, but he doesn’t react, so it must have cooled off.

 

They retreat back to the common room, the only wide open area of the house which has no doors that can shut them in. Donghae estimates that less than a minute must have passed since the moment they left the common room to the moment they entered again, but it looks like an earthquake happened.

 

“Goddamnit,” Kyuhyun bites out, obviously frustrated because none of the cameras are in place. The one mounted in the corner is askew, lens pointing towards the wall, and the tripod is in a heap; the audio recorder has once again landed on the floor instead of the tabletop, and the laser grid has fallen off the mantle.

 

“And there was no power,” Hyukjae says dully. “We didn’t catch any of that.”

 

“Is everything okay?” comes a hushed, terse voice from the entryway, distracting Donghae from attempting to make eye contact with Hyukjae. It’s Sungmin, eyes wide with concern.

 

“Everyone is fine, just shaken,” Kangin tells him, firmly but calmly.

 

Shindong moves over to Sungmin’s side and the eldest brother puts a protective arm over his shoulder, visibly relaxing. Ryeowook is clinging onto Leeteuk’s leg, small hand fisted into the fabric of his jeans, and Yesung hovers nearby, biting his lip. Donghae notes that Leeteuk is pale, but holding up pretty well. Kibum is the one to worry about - he’s hovering near the wall and sniffling every now and then.

 

“Heechul is trying to get the computers started up,” Sungmin tells Kyuhyun.

 

“By himself?” Kyuhyun remarks at the same time that Hyukjae says, “There’s power?”

 

As if in answer, the light grid blinks back into life. Small dots of light illuminate the part of the floor the device had fallen onto, the grid stretching out further and lighting up the couch and half the wall behind it.

 

“On the off-chance we caught anything…” Hyukjae trails off, but phrases it like a question to which Kyuhyun nods in agreement. The two of them disappear into the hallway at that, and suddenly the weight of exhaustion leans itself onto Donghae. If he were to close his eyes for longer than a blink, he feels like he could fall asleep where he stands.

 

“Try the lights,” he says, rubbing his hands over his face.

 

Kangin flips the switch and the lights come on overhead.

 

“Is that it for tonight?”

 

Donghae nods. “That’s it. We could all use some sleep anyway.”

 

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” comes Ryeowook’s hushed voice, his small face turned up to Leeteuk’s.

 

“Oh…” he says, then looks around, lost. “Is it a good idea?” he asks, eyes finally settling on Donghae.

 

“I think separating is….” Donghae stops, glancing back at Kibum. “I think we should all stay together.”

 

“I can’t go back in there,” Shindong pipes up, and the other boys nod.

 

“It’s safe now, right?” Kangin says reasonably, but Leeteuk is shaking his head.

 

“Youngwoon, just let them stay in sight. Just like we did before.”

 

“They’ll be fine in here.”

 

All eyes turn on Donghae. He nods his head once, hopefully looking reassuring.

 

“Are… you sure?”

 

“I’m sure. They’d be fine in the study, too, but we all need sleep. Everything will feel better in the daylight, anyway.”

 

“Okay,” Leeteuk says. “Then it’s settled.” He shares a look with Kangin which Donghae suspects says a thousand words, but Kangin doesn’t protest.

 

“We should move all the bedding in here, right? Kibum, will you help?”

 

Kibum starts, eyes swinging to Donghae. “Um. Yes?”

 

He’s silent as he follows Donghae back into the study. With the lights on, everything really does look fine, like nothing had ever happened, but Kibum continues his silence as they fold the comforters and make a trip to drop them off in the common room. They had back once more to the study to gather up the pillows. Kibum picks one up and then stops, staring at the floor. Donghae stops, too, and waits.

 

“It’s my fault, right?” Kibum says. When Donghae doesn’t respond, he finally lifts his eyes. “I left the door open. I let it in.”

 

Donghae tilts his head to the side. “You think the door would have stopped it?”

 

Kibum has nothing to say to that.

 

“Nobody is at fault. Not for any of this. You can tell your brothers that, too.”

 

“But if I hadn’t… it didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t have seen my… my mom.” He swallows hard. “I should’ve known better.”

 

Donghae shakes his head. “They prey on weakness. When they can’t find any, the exploit your fear and sorrow. They can’t stand us, you know? Humans. Our souls are too resilient.”

 

“How did it know?” Kibum says in a fragile voice, and Donghae remembers how young the boy is.

 

“It didn’t know. It guessed.”

 

Kibum blinks at him, brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

 

“That’s okay. I don’t really understand either,” Donghae says, cracking a wry smile. “But it knows family is a strong bond. It can’t tell the difference between this family and the family you lost, so what it intended for you to see was Leeteuk or Kangin, but what you actually saw was your biological mother. The one you who miss. But Kibum -  nobody is upset with you, and nobody blames you. So don’t let it win, okay?”

 

Kibum nods, wiping at his eyes. “Okay.”

 

They gather up the pillows in silence, but Donghae pauses once they reach the door. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he says, for what it’s worth. “I know how hard that is.”

 

“Thank you, hyung.”

  
 

\---

 

It was still early when the investigation was called off for the night. Early by their standards, anyway, as all told it had only lasted a few hours. The systems were all up and running again, but to Hyukjae, it was cold comfort. They’d captured nothing but that flicker of a shadow across the light grid right before Donghae had gone into his trance. He subconsciously rubs his right hand over the marks Donghae’s fingernails had left on his arm, glancing across the common room just in time to catch Donghae watching him. He smiles reassuringly.

 

Donghae blinks, mouths “Sorry,” and returns the smile. If he’s honest, Hyukjae is eager to know exactly what Donghae saw, but that conversation can wait a little longer.

 

It’s still pretty quiet, just some murmuring between the kids and the rustling of sheets as the pile of bedding the kids have been sleeping in gets transferred into the common room for the night. So when Ryeowook starts crying from his place on Leeteuk’s lap, it’s impossible to ignore.

 

“No! No! I won’t!” he cries in response to whatever Leeteuk is saying, the child’s voice much louder than his father’s.

 

“Ryeowook-ah, I’m sorry, but we can’t go back. The old house isn’t ours anymore.” Leeteuk tries to soothe him, voice gentle and a hand stroking over his hair, but the boy only squirms away.

 

“I want to go home!” he shouts, big tears rolling down his cheeks, and Hyukjae catches the devastated look the Leeteuk shoots Kangin’s way. In a moment, Kangin swoops down and plucks the child off Leeteuk’s lap, carrying him over to where the rest of the younger kids are sitting on the blanket pile, distracting themselves with video games. Ryeowook’s little legs kick out in a tantrum, but everyone else is silent. Nobody can blame him. In fact, Hyukjae is willing to bet that Ryeowook is only voicing what everyone else is thinking in that honest way that only toddlers can truly get away with.

 

“I won’t stay!” Ryeowook cries, “I want to go home!”

 

Yesung, so quiet as always, tries to haul Ryeowook onto his lap, but he’s only a child himself and has to settle for wrapping his arms around his brother and holding tight, but Ryeowook still cries. Leeteuk looks pale, rubbing at his temples while Kangin mutters something low and fast.

 

Hyukjae looks away. It’s not really his business, but if he’s honest with himself, he knows already that this is far from a routine case, and he hasn’t been properly distancing himself from this family since the very beginning. He cares about them more than a professional relationship calls for, and the sound of Ryeowook’s crying into an otherwise silent room feels like a rock sitting in his stomach. His determination to help this family as much as he can redoubles.

 

He and Kyuhyun have mostly finished resetting the cameras and audio devices, but they’ve decided to set up a separate camera directed at the fireplace just in case. Hyukjae is helping set up the tripod when he and sees Donghae disappear into the kitchen, reappearing a moment later and heading towards the children. He sits next to Ryeowook, folding his legs under himself and holding out a rosary. The kid stops wailing and takes it gingerly from Donghae, sniffling.

 

“It can protect you,” Donghae murmurs, low, but the house is in silence again and Hyukjae is tuned into them, fiddling uselessly with the tripod’s crank handle.

 

“Count the beads,” Donghae says, and Ryeowook’s fingers slide over them one by one, counting quietly aloud. When he’s no longer sniffling, Donghae smiles reassuringly and takes the rosary in one hand, Ryeowook’s wrist in the other. “Here,” he says, and begins to wrap the rosary around the boy’s wrist, across his small hand, weaving between his fingers until the crucifix settles into his palm. “Just hold onto it, okay?”

 

“And they can’t get me?”

 

Donghae bites his lip. “You have to believe in it.”

 

Ryeowook looks up at Donghae with such blind, child-like trust that it reminds Hyukjae too strongly of Ara, and he has to look away.

 

When Kyuhyun confirms that all the equipment is up and running the way it should be, they retire to bed. Leeteuk is still sitting on the couch when Hyukjae and Donghae leave the common room, which is where Hyukjae suspects he’ll remain for the rest of the night.

 

He trails behind Donghae down to the end of the north wing hallway, knowing full well that they’re the only ones who will be sleeping apart from the rest of the group. But if Donghae feels comfortable, then so does Hyukjae. They take turns with the ensuite bathroom without a word of coordination, and when Donghae exits the bathroom, he looks pale with exhaustion in the artificial light.

 

Even still, he’s no longer beside him when Hyukjae wakes up in the middle of the night. He groans and rolls over and Donghae’s spot on the bed is still warm, so he can’t have been gone for long.

 

Hyukjae doesn’t bother checking the time, just hauls himself out of bed. His destination is the kitchen but he never makes it there, because he finds Donghae in the common room, arms crossed over his chest and gazing sleepily at the fireplace.

 

In the dark, the kids look like a pile of sleeping puppies all curled into the blankets. Leeteuk is indeed asleep on the couch, Kangin crammed uncomfortably into the armchair. It’s quiet enough that Hyukjae can actually hear the low movements of Kyuhyun and the others shuffling around in the kitchen, faint computer mouse clicks sounding like the hands of a clock that keeps bad time. He hopes they’re taking turns watching the screens, because it’s been a long few days and everyone needs sleep.

 

Hyukjae comes to stand shoulder to shoulder with Donghae, watching the motionless fireplace. After a minute of this, Donghae says, “What drives a man to kill his own daughter?”

 

His voice is barely above a whisper yet his words are jarring. Hyukjae frowns, thinking back, and remembers that Donghae had said it was Yeong-Ja’s father who had killed her. Out of fear? Grief? Self-preservation? None of them seem justifiable in his eyes.

 

“I don’t know, but it happened a long time ago. Let’s just worry about what we can do for her now.”

 

Donghae sighs out a breath. “I know, but I can’t stop thinking about it. She wanted someone to know what they did to her, but I wonder… is there something I’m missing?”

 

“You know what I’m going to say, right?” Hyukjae says, and Donghae turns to face him.

“That I should worry about it in the morning?”

 

“Yeah,” Hyukjae chuckles, leaning forward to press a kiss to Donghae’s forehead. “Siwon will be here in a few hours. Let’s meet him well, okay?”

 

Donghae nods and allows Hyukjae to thread their fingers together. Like this they head down the corridor once again, comforted by the knowledge that daylight is on its way, and Siwon will arrive along with it, and soon this will all be over.


End file.
